Chapter Text
“You need to overlap the two ends–”
“Right.”
“And then it’s a sort of flip and tuck.”
“I flip it over?”
“No, no. You sort of–”
Peter turned his head to watch May wave her hands about in a nonsensical fashion. She is meant to be helping him get ready for Homecoming. A few months ago he didn’t think he’d have the time to attend, let alone attend with a date but life had a funny way of proving him wrong constantly. He should know better than to believe he could ever predict how things are going to pan out - although this time around, he’d say it’d worked out pretty well in his favour. He might have been pulled off the weapons dealers and he might be grounded as Spider-Man (maybe never able to return), but he had a date to a dance and– if that’s what normal looked like for him now, it was a pretty good view.
(If he kept telling himself that then maybe it would be true.)
However, May’s aid tells him that it isn’t just the tie that belonged to his Uncle Ben but the knowledge of how to knot it properly. With the befuddled look on May’s face, as her eyes remained locked on the laptop on the kitchen table, Peter knew that there were no sweet moments where May would fix Ben’s tie or do it for him, and without Ben here now they were both fumbling.
The two ends of his tie hung limply in his hands. They look less enthused by May’s explanation than Peter did as if they were trying to silently tell him that his Aunt had completely the wrong idea about this all.
Peter didn’t need an inanimate object telling him that, but there was very little that he wouldn’t at least try if May was telling him to do it.
He tried to follow her instruction, squinting down at two pieces of fabric as he attempted to knot them together. As he tucks the larger side over the thinner end, fingers scratching along his throat, his eyes lift to the ceiling and notices the cobwebs stretched between the lights - he’ll have to dust them away next time May is out. She hates dealing with the spiders, she doesn’t know how funny that is.
(It sort of terrifies Peter.)
He smooths his fingers over the knot once it’s done, face twisting as his fingers brush over the smooth fabric and are met with something that in no way can match what’s on the video playing in front of them.
“This is wrong.” He says, telling her the obvious. “We’ve done something wrong.”
“I– think if you squint it looks great.”
“It’s a mess!”
“It’s abstract!” May replies, a bright smile taking over her face. “Didn't you say she was an artist, maybe she’d appreciate that!”
“That’s Michelle, I’m taking Liz.” He huffs.
“Oh.” Her smile drops, wetting her lips as she tries to think of her next reply. “Have you considered asking this Michelle girl?”
“May!” Peter whines indignantly.
May’s eyes roll fondly, “Alright, alright. Let’s take it from the top again. Undo that and take the two ends–”
Two lines.
Thick and bold, impossible to ignore. Wrought silence growing louder by the second just like the tiny heartbeat between them.
Nausea washes over him, but he doesn’t succumb, clenching his eyes shut and trying to cling on to the phantom feeling of his hand on someone else’s back when they couldn’t fight the waves of it– so many mornings spent with legs stretched out over cold tiles instead of in their bed because of two lines.
Two simple, thick and straight, little lines.
If he had counted his days right then those small lines would be a pear, maybe closer to an avocado if they got his height. When he’d last seen those two lines, they’d been the size of a plum, the smallest dot on a black and white screen shown at an appointment he had barely made it in time for.
Two breaths in quick succession as nausea sweeps over him again. Bile fills his mouth, head turning away from the panel in front of him. He doesn’t know which wire he needs to cut to reroute some of the power in hopes of getting even the smallest boost to their engines, he can’t imagine that puking into the alcove will do very much good at all either way.
He is hungry. They’re always hungry. They’ve lasted this long because hungry is better than starving and dead. They split the food that’d been hoarded on the ship into rations and then divided it again, making sure that they had enough to see straight and survive another day.
Peter remembers when he used to bemoan Ben and May’s habit of bulk cooking for the week, hating that they’d be eating the same pan of lasagna for days. Somehow whenever it was May’s turn to cook, the food seemed to hang around longer and none of them were willing to throw out anything ‘edible’. Peter stopped complaining after Ben died, but he thinks that May might still find a reason to smile if she heard how he’d devour at least three sheet pans of her cooking right now if he could. It is one of the first five things he’ll do if– when he gets home.
Once he has swallowed back the pooling salvia in his mouth, Peter looks back to the panel and the mess in front of him.
Two wires.
Weeks ago, he’d thought the most insane thing he’d ever do was climb on to a spaceship blindly with no idea the direction he was heading. In truth, that wasn’t so different from so many other things he’d done– putting on the suit at fourteen, fighting men dressed as vultures, rhinos and scorpions, fighting a man made out of sand, sometimes spending more time with them than he did his girlfriend– losing his girlfriend, close to losing his friends too, getting them back because maybe a spandex suit wasn’t the only thing he had going for him. A lot had become part of the course though, spaceships weren’t.
Spaceships were never meant to be a part of his life, and now he’d spent three weeks on one, grown intimate enough with the mechanics of it to start pulling back sheets of metal and rummaging through its innards.
The days were long, no sun outside the windows to tell him or Nebula if time had passed, so his mind tended to drift. When his hands skirted along the wires, and every connection point that he tested and every attempt that failed, and he was reminding himself why he was trying at all, he thought about the times Ben had taken him to the synagogue and the yad tracing over the scripture. He thought about the picture of May’s grandmother and the rosary that was hung over the top. Acts of love and acts of worship.
He didn’t have a scroll or any beads, only the metal and plastic that he spent his days trying to repair. It was all a prayer that he could get home to that little pear and his girlfriend.
His fingers pass over the two wires again, taking them both in his hand and feeling them individually, indecisive about which one he should cut. Blue or red. There was a joke there - Ned would quote the Matrix, MJ would roll her eyes and mouth along. Peter isn’t sure what he’d do then, but knows for certain how he would act now.
Two choices.
Stay or go.
Stay and watch as the wizard and his stone was carried into the sky on the metal ring that’d crashed into his home. Stay and watch as someone got hurt because aliens were above the needs of the neighbourhood. Stay and help those scattered, move the cars that’d been collateral and prepare for whatever came next - Peter knew better than to believe this was the end. There was always something; coming home with sand spilling out from his boots and gravel-given grazes on his cheek to his girlfriend holding those two lines - aliens weren’t his problem… but bricks were missing from Greenwich buildings and people were running scared. Aliens had become part of the neighbour’s needs. Watching the wizard be carried away meant he was letting someone go and Peter Parker wasn’t very good at that–until they were forcibly slipping through his fingers–
Two heartbeats back at home– and so many more that he wants to hear.
Two heartbeats on this ship– there should be so many more. One appears by his side, looking over his shoulder with her ever-flat expression.
“Blue wire is Oxygen,” Nebula tells him. “Cut that and we die.”
One choice then – Peter feels as though he’s heard that before.
“Incorrect.” Nebula tells him after he’s finished answering. He waits. When they’d first started playing this game, she would only ever leave her responses at that, staring at him until he posed his question to her. Now her raspy voice cautiously reveals the correct answer, her hesitancy fading the longer they spend together so he continues to grant her patience as she slowly learns that even in competitions like this not everything has to be so cutthroat. “Maklu IV is colder than your tundras could possibly imagine to be.”
“Huh... that’s cool.” Peter replies, genuinely impressed and trying his best to store the knowledge away in his tired mind. If he gets the opportunity– he will, he has to– he wants to share this information with his child.
The universe is so much bigger than Peter himself had ever realised. He has the rare opportunity to tell his child exactly what it's like to be sat amongst the stars, to spill stories about galaxies far beyond theirs and unknown ecosystems. They’ll get to know that everything is so much bigger than they believed. They’ll know all that and still feel that they’re at the centre of it, because while Peter can look out the window and see stars or hear Nebula talk about entire cosmos' and galaxies, he believes that something the size of a pear or maybe an avocado is the greatest thing amongst all that.
At his reply, there is the smallest break in Nebula’s stoicism. Her head rears back and her lips quirk a fraction, continually surprised by the praise and the lack of argument. She’ll stuff it down and feign disinterest in human customs when it’s his turn to ask the question while her throat constricted. She’d fake annoyance that the intel Peter Quill, ‘Star Lord’, had given her was long outdated and they’d both sit in an uncomfortable silence as they register with his death everything he knew will only ever exist in the past tense now.
There is too much time to spare up here. They’d tried other ways to fill their time, games that Peter tried to teach Nebula, but she was too quiet while playing. There was only so much quiet he could take, so he fell back to old habits. When he was a kid, his parents would keep him occupied on road trips to their nearby conference by quizzing him on the solar system and the periodic table. They’d ask him the states and their capitals, waiting until he’d mastered those before broadening it to the whole globe. Whenever he got fifteen in a row correct, a candy would be passed back to him from between the front seats and he’d catch his mother’s white teeth grinning at him in the rearview.
The first time he really caught MJ smiling at him was during an AcaDec practice. It was small, her lip barely lifted, but it was just enough for a small divot to form by her form– that was the first time Peter realised she had dimples.
After MJ had become captain, Peter had decided he was going to take these things more seriously. Turning down Tony’s offer and scaling things back to focusing just on the neighbourhood meant focusing on his friends too– attention he greatly owed them all considering how he’d behaved throughout that first semester (if only the lesson stuck later on in his life). Whether she thought of herself as one, he wasn’t sure, but MJ was his friend and supporting her in her new captaincy felt like a good starting point for them.
‘ You’re here.’
‘Uh. Yeah.’
‘You’re early.’
‘I’m hoping to make it a pattern.’
‘I won’t hold my breath.’
‘If I can be early for three practices, can I make up a drill for you?’
Three practices later, Peter raced to the auditorium and set the chairs up the way MJ liked them, taking his place and waiting with hands folded over the desk until she strolled in. It only took a second before his face was splitting into a smug grin, mind already debating what questions to throw her way.
‘ You have to make it a challenge.’ She had said warningly though her eyes were bright and there was that little dimple pressing into her cheek, ‘ otherwise I’ll be really disappointed that you wasted such an opportunity.’
He misses MJ. Everything from the sound of her feet padding across the floorboards to her wicked sense of humour. He wants to be home with her again. He wants the quiet to be dispelled by the sound of traffic and angry neighbours outside, and wants all of it to fade away into nothing but a hum as he locks on to her heartbeat and those dimples forming his thumb as he holds her cheek to kiss her.
Three weeks ago, he’d been heading towards a job interview. Before he was ever bitten by the spider, Peter had high hopes for himself at twenty-five, he thought he’d have it all figured out; the job, the girl, he’d had May set up in a comfortable life as a thank you for all that she’d given him. Nearly ten years as Spider-Man, he knew those hopes were just a bit of a stretch - he could barely manage juggling one on any good week.
The longest job he’d managed to hold down was with the Bugle, a stint that he doesn’t take pride in and something that Jameson likes to laugh at him about. May was still watching out for him after all these years, but Peter He and MJ had finally managed to make it work but not without a tumultuous journey, and he was all too aware that with a baby on the way, they can’t repeat their previous mistakes, he can’t.
They want this to work. They always have, and they’ve always tried , but that hasn’t always been enough. This time around, he is making sure it is. Things were going to have to change.
He set his pride aside and accepted some help, he applied for a job at Ned’s company. Normally, he wouldn’t have dared to impose on his friend’s work life like that, knowing that Ned’s loyalty would split his judgement when it came to Peter’s usual luck with work - he’d risk his own position trying to cover for him every time something Spider related cropped up the same way he did in High School. However, now, Peter was planning on taking some time off from the webs - just a small sabbatical that other heroes of the city had promised him they’d happily cover.
The job was underpaid for how overqualified Peter was, but it came with good benefits, good insurance. He could get some paid paternity leave, and it was steady. It would be enough to cover their bills while MJ took time off - rather than her rushing back to work like he knows she’d been debating - the stress of being the higher (at points, only) earner in their household weighing on her as each week passed and their little fruit grew and changed.
She didn’t say anything directly, but Peter was paying attention - things were changing. For the better.
He applied for a job working under Ned - ‘not for the first time’ MJ had giggled into his shoulder that morning while in the shower. His hands resting on her abdomen and lips sliding over wet skin as he fell a little more in love with her again and again and again - he’d put on his whitest shirt, worn the cologne May got him for his college graduation and stupidly packed his suit in his bag because while he’d promised to take a break once the baby was born, he was still himself. Having it in his bag rather than wearing it under his clothes was his way of weaning off the adrenaline.
Sitting on the cold metal floor of Nebula’s ship with the awful gift of hindsight, Peter wonders if he hadn’t packed the suit that day, if he ever would have ended up here.
The more coherent part of his brain knows that line of thinking is redundant. Especially now, because he would have always ended up following the wizard. He would have always gone swinging towards that fight as soon as he saw an alert declaring that Iron Man had donned his suit again after years of silence. It was always going to end like this. The illusion of choice - he should give that one to Mysterio for free next time he sees him. If he sees him.
God . The world - universe - must really be going to shit if he’s yearning for foes who’d made his Sophomore year of college unbearable. Chuckling to himself, Peter drops his head to look out the window of the ship. Nebula is asleep somewhere else. The deep expanse outside is his only company.
The sky around them isn’t black, navy and gold and silver, hues of purple and pink as stars and comets collide, gases exploding. These are things no telescope could ever capture. He wants to take photos of this, wants to show his child, wants to give them some proof that even when it seems dark, something is always happening. The world ended. People died , Tony fell to pieces between his fingers, and yet atoms are still colliding into one another. Creation amongst destruction.
That’s a lesson he wishes he could teach his child.
His heart clenching as the darkness creeps from outside the window and into his thoughts, hope fading out. With how things are going, he won’t get the chance to tell them these things. Peter’ll just be a story that’s passed on from MJ ad May and Ned and Flash and– everyone who had to still be down on earth, who couldn’t have dusted because— Well– There–
There was only so much tragedy that even Peter Parker could take. Tony had been taken from him, whoever was ruling over the cosmos must have granted him some kind of mercy not to take anyone else.
A shuddering breath ripples through his chest. His eyes focuses back outside, locking on to the faint golden hues he assumes are stars. They glitter teasingly, and Peter forces a tight smile on his face.
If he can’t teach his child of hope, then at least they’ll know of his love for their mother. When she eventually has to clear out his drawers and donate his clothes, the same way that Ben had done with Peter’s parents, and May had done with Ben’s stuff, MJ will find the ring. He won’t need to be there to explain, she’ll know - things have changed after all, and she’s always been able to read him. Without him being there to explain, she’ll know that the ring has been stuck in that drawer since they first moved in together; she’ll know that Peter scared himself out of proposing when she got pregnant, not wanting her to think he was doing it for the wrong reasons; she’ll know that the ring was sitting that drawer because she is MJ and he is Peter and he really, really, really intended for this time around to be the one that stuck.
She’ll pass that onto their child.
Like the feeling bubbling away in his chest, the gold hues grow bigger. The window his forehead is resting against begins to grow warm. The star turns into a nova and then– a person. No.
A saviour.
Maybelle Reilly never wanted kids. She moved to New York at eighteen, fresh-faced from the countryside and having spent the summer attending so many of her friends and cousins’ weddings, spotting babygrows wrapped with little bows amongst the gifts - all hand-me-downs and all signs of what was expected of the little life they all led in that town.
When she first arrived in the city, she wasn’t interested in finding anyone or settling down. She was too busy for all that and too eager to live her new independence to the fullest.
May Parker never wanted kids either. Marrying Ben had been an unexpected surprise and a pleasure, but her opinion remained unchanged. May wasn’t interested in sharing the life they’d built with anyone but themselves. Ben couldn’t have kids even if he wanted them, and he’d broadened their family in other ways - frequent visits to the little brother he practically raised and their toddler, befriending anyone and everyone and bringing them into the fold. They lived a full life. They lived a life well-loved despite dodging continual questions from friends about when it would be ‘their turn’.
Three years after marrying Ben, May Parker became the guardian of six-year old Peter Benjamin Parker. Her past choices and her past wants didn’t matter so much anymore, because Peter was family and he was scared and he was so young. She had only known him a short time. She had spent most of that time smuggling him candy and sweet treats under his parents’ watchful eye, never quite being responsible the way Ben had to be.
May knew nothing about being a parent. Peter already had parents, they were just gone, and she had no interest in masquerading as her friends. As helpless as she’d felt, before he stepped over the threshold into his new home, she made a promise to try and be something to him. Peter was figuring out how to be a person in a world without his parents as much as May was figuring out how to be a person with a child. It was a mess they could navigate together, and through it all they’d have Ben beside them too who knew a little bit more about both sides - the expert in the conversation so to speak.
At thirty-nine, May Parker became a widow and the single living relative and guardian of Peter Parker. Things became a little harder to figure out as the world, their emotions and everything grew just that little more complicated (lat the time, ittle did she know the severity of the complications), but she resolved to figure it out. Her promise to Peter remained despite the near decade that’d passed.
‘ It’s just you and me’, she’d told him and meant it.
May Parker, although occasionally rushing in a little late - punctuality was never going to be a strong suit for Peter - was there as often as she could be for any city-based competitions or school events. She connected with his friend’s parents, nominated herself for pick-ups and ride shares whenever she could, passed her phone number to his friends ‘ just in case’ . She was the first on the scene when the AcaDec bus arrived back from DC, a flurry of long arms wrapping around him and hands on cheeks and lips on the crown of his head, worried words spilling from her mouth.
May had told him all this when he announced the pregnancy to her - or more, she had noticed the bags under his eyes were deeper than normal, there was a hollowness in his gaze and a jitter in his leg. She clocked him immediately, and when he’d spilled all his fears about fatherhood and mistakes, she’d told him all of her own.
In Peter’s eyes, she hadn’t made any. Even her terrible cooking came with fond memories, because she’d been there. May Parker, who had never wanted to expected to be needed in such a way, had been a steadfast and loving presence to him for as long as he could remember.
Which is why when the ship landed on the ground and the loading doors opened, Peter expected May Parker to do what she always did. He expected her to be there.
There was no hurricane scooping him up into her arms, there were no grateful murmurs mixed with words of warning as his eyes met hers. There was only a cool, metal arm wrapping around his middle when his feet dragged, stumbling from the slope of the ship to the grass of the compound, unused to the sturdiness, unused to feeling grounded.
There were no round glasses, and there was certainly no head of braids next to her. There is only Sam Wilson and Pepper Potts.
May Reilly nee Parker was not present and there is only one thing that could have stopped her.
Peter’s legs give out beneath him, his knees hitting the grass and growing more intimately acquainted with earth once again. His insides stop working. His heart stops beating and his mind goes numb. There is irony in that he finally feels weightless once he has left space.
He doesn’t come back to himself until he is lifted up and face to face with Pepper. Her own face downturned and sad. Her eyes are wet, and there is a smile forced on to her face, similar to the one she wears in front of the press. Her expression wobbles and wavers like tV flickering between static and image, struggling to signal to settle on the right channel.
Peter understands entirely.
Two people stared at one another, grateful but wishing the person in front of them was someone else.
“He’s gone.” Peter starts. He should start. He is the hero– no. He is the soldier , who has returned. He should be the brave one. He should do the hard thing. That’s what it meant to wear the suit.
His mouth is dry and his lips are cracked, he can taste iron when his tongue darts out nervously.
“I’m so sorry.”
Pepper’s eyes clench close. Tears slipping down her cheeks but she doesn’t break. Not yet. He hates himself for being selfishly pleased about that, knowing it would take longer for him to hear the truth if she had to compose herself.
“They’re inside.” Peter chokes on a relieved sob at Pepper’s words. “MJ and the baby, they’re— they’re inside.”
Two lines. Two people. The only ones that remain.
His mouth tastes sour and acrid as the thought forms. Scared of what might else be ripped from him, Peter thanks god for the small mercy.
There’s a discussion about if Peter and Nebula should be quarantined. It is hard for him to focus on the conversation. He has an IV in his arm that is making him all the more aware of his aches and pains than he had been before. Behind the migraine and exhaustion and bitterness, he latches on to the faint, steady thrum he can hear beating outside the MedBay.
Two heartbeats.
The conversation continues while he grits his teeth. They are in unfamiliar territory, the voices of Avengers more versed in this notably missing so they spin circles on appropriate measures for healing stints in space. They talk more so about Peter, for the sake of MJ. The way it’s whispered, barely audible and spoken with sidelong glances, he knows that the hardship didn’t end with the snap.
Four weeks is the correct measure of how long he had been floating up in space. One whole month lost. One whole month of MJ waiting down here alone; no May and no Ned to accompany her like they usually would.
It was just her and the little life they’d brought into the world, comforted by the knowledge that they wouldn’t be doing any of this alone because they’d have people like May and friends like Ned and fuck even nuisances like Tony.
As a couple, they were like elastic bands. They were able to stretch and pull and survive, but sometimes there was enough pressure and they’d snap. They were terrified of having this baby; their promises to each other assuaged some of that, but it was the other people that made them feel safer. Their little village that was made of stronger stuff, the walls that wrapped around them and stopped them both from running too far.
It was all gone in a matter of seconds and they’d been surviving without it for four consecutive weeks. MJ was the one who had been living with the reality of it. His time in space had allowed Peter some time with hope and delusion that was rapidly crashing around him.
The threat of quarantine away from the remains of his family sparks rage inside of him that can’t be settled even by the notion of its possible necessity.
Thankfully, the walking fur ball that belongs to Nebula says that they don’t have the equipment to check them. Silence rings out; Peter, Pepper and Sam are all too aware that if someone else were here, he might think of a solution to that.
None of them are Tony Stark, though. He is dead.
And Peter is just Spider-Man, a title that feels like a mockery with how little of an impact it’s actually had.
Spider-Man was meant to save people. Spider-Man was meant to help.
“If they were carrying anything, lover boy over there would be missing half his face. Only thing that could survive four weeks on that ship in those conditions is flesh eating.” Rocket explains.
That was enough to settle the argument for him.
He stumbles when he stands, one hand gripping the pole holding his IV and the other shooting out to grab Nebula’s arm which is already out and waiting for him.
“Sit down.” She orders coolly. “There’s still time for you to lose your face in other ways.”
Only Peter and Rocket laugh. The latter is more of a barking sound, seemingly surprising himself, and Peter barely has enough air in his lungs to make more than a short wheeze, but the intent is there. Neither Sam nor Pepper see the humour in Nebula’s dry delivery. In fairness, their minds are probably occupied with bigger things than deciphering her tone. He’s just had plenty of time to get to know her.
A whole month.
Time he could have spent getting to know their baby who was no longer a pear but a whole pepper.
“Can MJ come–”
“You’re overestimating us if you think we’ll be able to stop her once she hears you’ve got the all clear.” Sam says. “She’s a stubborn one.”
Leaning back into his bed, Peter’s mouth manages to facsimile a smile. He was far too tired and too drained to allow it to stretch into the real earnest thing. His body just knew how to react to MJ’s attitude. Loving even the most challenging parts of her was muscle memory to him.
The automatic doors peel open not long after. There is no hurricane, there are no shouts or dramatic reunions. There is just MJ in front of him, and in one moment, Peter remembers what it is like to breathe properly once more. In the next, his breath is stolen all over again as she steps towards, becoming more corporeal and real.
The memory of her and the dreams he had on the ship pale in comparison to her. Nothing could be better than the sight of her in his room with her hair wrapped in a scarf, dressed in sweatpants that cut off above her ankles and a crewneck with faded lettering from an unknown owner - with how often Peter crashes on various couches and borrowed clothes after patrol, the whole group had a habit of trading clothes. The fabric is a little tighter around her midsection, not hanging loose the way it had weeks ago.
His lungs begin to work again when his eyes move upwards, watching as her chest rises and falls. His own following suit. Her heartbeat is loud in his ears, drowning out the pounding of his head and replacing it with something sweeter and safer. It beats at a pattern, Peter can’t replicate. His own heart hammering away, too overwhelmed to worry about the monitor attached to him that gives him away entirely.
“You’re alive.” She whimpers, her voice shaking.
Peter nods.
“Can I–”
“Yes.” He answers immediately before she can finish her question that is borne from too many trips like this. How many times have they been in this exact position? How many times has he not wanted her close because she might see past the façade of ‘I promise I’m okay’? How many times has it sparked fights?
The answers to any of those questions don’t matter now, because Michelle is right in front of him. She is real and there. She is all that he needs right now. She is the answer, and maybe the only thing that could even attempt to soothe the burning ache of everything else.
Lips against his, pressing into him with a learned softness. Desperation held back behind a dam that was built brick by brick by this routine; swing off into danger, do something stupid, reunion. They know it well.
Wet tears sliding down her cheeks and between the fingers that cup her face.
He hates making her cry. He constantly promises to never do it again. Every night that she cries in front of him and every time she’s cried when her back has been turned away, thinking he was finally asleep, he scolds himself and promises to do better.
He apologises again and again, whispering the words against her lips and hating himself a little bit more for being thankful for the tears today because she is here and she is real. MJ and their small avocado aren’t prayers or hopes anymore, they’re a complete reality he is digging his fingers into and refusing to let go, the good and even the bad.
He won’t let this be taken from him too.
Peter has coiled around her, his ear pressed to her stomach, leg thrown over hers. One of her hands is tangled into his hair, the other resting on her abdomen next to his face. Intermittently, Peter will stretch forward and press feather light kisses to her fingertips.
“You won’t go to New Jersey, but you’ll hang around in space?” MJ asks, breaking the silence between them. Her voice is soft, scratching pleasantly at the right parts of Peter’s brain in the same way her nails do across his scalp.
“Would you believe that I still rank Jersey below space?”
“That’s not an invitation to go back.” She says, still quiet but firmer.
(‘You two will work it out.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh kiddo, MJ is too stubborn to be shaken loose by your stupidity.’
‘Hey! I feel like you’re meant to be on my side here!’
‘Stop being so stubborn yourself and maybe I will be.’)
His heart tightens, squeezing so tightly that he can literally feel the gap in his chest. It feels as though it will never fit quite right between his ribs again - such a huge part of it had been ripped from him.
Shifting, Peter looks up at her, awed by the way she looks - because she’s here.
The stark white light of his room is designed to bring all secrets into the light, no ailment could be hidden in there. It was made to make him and any occupant look they’re very worst, wash out their skin, highlight the bruises. In MJ, he can see the dark circles under her eyes, her skin washed out, a few pimples lining the edge of her jaw where her thumb had likely been worrying the skin endlessly over the last few weeks, he can see what he has put her through and is all too aware that she sees exactly the same in him.
“I’m sorry I–” He starts, voice cracking. The amount of things he could apologise for is too long. Half the apologies shouldn’t be directed towards her, they need to go to May and Ned and Tony and– everyone else that he has let down. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back sooner. I– I tried.” Tears swell, swallowing back a sob he tries for a weak joke. “Learned space engineering.”
“Think we should move out to Houston then?”
“Maybe.” He says, half serious when he thinks about the city and what is left for them there - a New York without May Parker and Ned Leeds doesn’t feel much like New York at all, but—
“That was a joke. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Yeah?”
MJ’s hand slid more protectively over her stomach, closer to Peter’s face and instantly he turns his head to kiss her knuckles and then her stomach. “We’re all they’ve got now… It’s just us, and we– we need to be somewhere it doesn’t feel like just us.”
Maybelle Reilly hadn’t run when it got hard; Peter Parker wasn’t going to either.
His child was going to know her through his actions. She wouldn’t be gone entirely.
Peter’s eyes are on the ceiling. There is a dusty cobweb making a bridge from the light in the lounge to the top of the kitchen cupboards. Across the room and next to the window, there is a new web that connects the curtain rail to the top of the bookshelf. Tucked into the very corner of the room, watching over its home, is a small, black spider.
He has no idea if both webs belong to the spider. Even with a feather duster, May couldn’t reach the ceilings to clear them away, and while it had only been a few months since she’d been gone, Peter had broken his promise to clear them for her long before that. He’d never found the time to stop by and do something as menial as walking along her ceiling to swipe them away - a trick he’d once needed to hide from her and now brought her great entertainment to watch. For all he knows, the grey dusty cobweb in the kitchen is a remnant of his failed promise and the spider that made it is long gone and dead. The one in the corner is trying to take up as little space as possible while making it his home.
Maybe spiders don’t think like that at all. If true, he’s a little envious. It would have been nice if that were something else the one who bit him could have passed over.
“Mama, I’m fine. ”
The words carry up from the stairwell, echoing through the open door with each of their approaching footsteps. Their voices chase Peter away from the lounge and towards May’s bedroom, needing a moment.
This apartment might be filled, boxes beginning to clutter the already cramped space, but so many walls around them house an empty shell, - no bodies inside them, items raided or units empty entirely when people, just like he and MJ, had scurried somewhere else.
Calling their situation ‘lucky’ leaves a sour taste in Peter’s mouth. Bile rises up in his throat, but he isn’t sure what else to say; their last apartment was cramped and tiny. It wasn’t fit for the family they were about to become. There was mould growing behind a bookcase, their laundry would always smell a little damp and their Aircon was temperamental. The lease was a continual fight to escape, until their landlord vanished. Somewhere in the city, a man who hardly ever stepped forward to care for repairs crumbled to dust just like their apartment attempted to do.
Banks had bigger issues than unpaid rents, and with no one looking to pick up the heavy work of checking which tenants were still around, MJ and Peter were quietly able to move from their apartment elsewhere… Somewhere not made for a family but that’d housed one anyway.
“That has to be too heavy,” Kayla says, now entering the threshold of May’s old apartment. Peter tucks himself further into May’s bedroom, not quite ready to face anyone while he still takes this in.
“I’m pregnant, I can carry a box.”
“Where’s Pe–”
“ Mom.” MJ snaps, her voice is tight and terse. Her composure is held together by the thinnest of strings.
Guilt tugs in his heart, orchestrating him from that permanent place it resides in his chest. She’s stressed too, moving with her mom’s help isn’t MJ’s idea of a good time. They have their own complications, and normally she’d lean on him, use him as a buffer between them but today– today Peter can’t quite be that, selfishly needing time to process how they’re going to be taking over this space that had once belonged to May despite this being his suggestion.
Seeing their stuff, even in the temporary positions they’d left, feels a little bit like they’re erasing her existence.
Moving into May’s apartment made sense . Eventually, the banks would begin chasing mortgage payments, especially with how much was left on the apartment - May and Ben had remortgaged when they took Peter in. They needed to do his parents’ place up to sell, and needed to adjust their life so heavily to accommodate a child. Iit was bigger than their old place - not by much but Peter’s old bedroom could become a nursery once they were ready. The living room and kitchen could comfortably contain a walker and a playpen without them having to sacrifice a coffee or dining table. They could exist here.
(And Peter wouldn’t have to watch another home vanish into someone else’s hands.)
Now that he’s standing there, preparing for a life in this apartment without May Parker also there, he doesn’t know how to be here. Half tempted to turn and tell MJ to pack up all their things, figure out a way to balance their rent and the mortgage - if he can fight in space then he can make ends meet.
(Then again, he lost in space, didn’t he?)
“He should be helping you.”
“Mom, please. He’s just… taking a break.”
“While you’re hiking up those stairs? All I’m trying to say is that I know this is hard on the both of you , if he’s taking a break then maybe you should too.”
“I just want to get this done.” MJ huffs exasperated, close to reaching the end of her tether.
MJ loves her mom. There is no denying that, there is just a distance between them that Peter has never quite been able to understand. It was carved earlier than Kayla’s divorce to MJ’s dad, one of the reasons that made MJ’s decision to remain with her father not easy but logical. She’s never quite been able to put into words what it was that didn’t align between them other than ‘we’re too different’, Peter has always known better than to voice his thoughts on that matter.
Now she’s the only parent that MJ has left. She’s helping them move into this apartment, having travelled from across state borders to be with her daughter and they’re descending into immature arguments.
He’s trying hard not to be jealous, trying harder to see this all from MJ’s point of view just a little, but it’s a struggle.
He wasn’t always a good nephew. He didn’t always live up to the promises that he made. There is more evidence of that than the cobwebs that are mocking him in the kitchen, but he always answered May’s calls - or at least tried to. There wasn’t a week that went by where there wasn’t some message exchanged between them. Even if it was an order for groceries or a screenshot of an email and a thumbs up, there was something. It was just the two of them, there had to be.
Now MJ’s in the same boat as he was and she’s– The lump in his throat grows in size, the sharp corners of it cutting into him. For all that they’ve overcome a lot of their issues, maybe this one just wasn’t for him to understand. He didn’t speak on it before and he knows that if he were to try now that Peter would fumble over his words and say something hurtful.
Peter sighs, rubbing his eyes as they begin to itch.
He has swung through the city so many times over, gone for endless rounds with the best and worst of the city, but hiking a couple of boxes up flights of stairs that he’d trekked for years had left him exhausted.
Footsteps approach from behind, a hand tentatively reaching out to touch the small of his back. He reaches back and pulls MJ snugly into his side. Her stomach is rounder, more distended and begs for his palm to run over it. He wonders how much the baby shifts at his touch, chasing the warmth of his palm. The prickle behind his eyes grows.
“We’ve only got the heavier stuff now.” MJ mumbles, pressing her cheek hard into his shoulder, slumping against him. Turning to kiss her forehead, Peter asks “That your way of telling me to get off my ass?”
“Only gently.” She chuckles.
“How you doing?”
MJ sighs, a long exhale that drags out all the air in her lungs. Like she wants to fold herself over and shrink away from the question rather than inspect the conflicting feelings that are no doubt brewing in her mind.
In the kitchen, he can hear her mom opening up boxes in search of a kettle, muttering to herself about making tea to calm everyone down. Peter squeezes MJ tighter, pushing back his own emotions to try and be there for her in this moment the way that she’s been there for him while they’d undergone this whole process.
“I’m so tired.” She whispers.
“Baby?” Peter guesses, giving her an out if she doesn’t want to broach the topic of her mom.
“Not even that, it’s just so–- “ She breathes out again, reaching up to rub her own eyes. “I’m happy she’s here, but–” Her words cut off, looking at him before shaking her head as if trying to physically shoo away whatever it was that she was going to say next. “I just want this day to be over.”
He kisses the crown of her head, thinking it would be better if he didn’t reply to that. He was too tender to think about mincing his words.
“I’ll be happy when it’s just us again.” They both know that this doesn't include the ghosts that haunt the space around them. “We’ll be able to properly settle in that way. Unpack everything a little more easily.”
“Are you okay?” MJ whispers, lifting her head to meet his eye. Peter sniffs and shrugs. “We won’t move this stuff out of here just yet.”
“Then where are we going to sleep?” Peter asks, throat thick and words coming out in a croak.
“You have a bed in your old room, right?”
“Yeah, but we’ll need that for the–”
“Not yet we won’t.” She tells him firmly. “Not for a little longer. We can take our time.”
Peter sighs, kissing the top of MJ’s head once again.
That’s something they’ve been telling themselves on repeat for the last couple of months since the blip. Time. They have time because everyone else in the world is running at a snail’s pace while trying to push everything back to normal as fast as they can. It’s complicated and conflicted. It’s the smallest turn of phrase that he’s clung to as he’s swallowed back mixed emotions about the sabbatical he’s taking from Spider-Man.
They have time, and if it isn’t also the worse thing to know how long they have ahead of them while May and Ned and Tony and MJ’s dad and Mrs Norris from upstairs and their landlord and everyone is gone.
They have time, that is both a blessing and a curse.
“I don’t know if there’ll ever be enough before I’m ready to move her stuff out.” He swallows. “She’s still got some of Ben’s stuff in the closet.”
MJ squeezes his waist, a grounding pinch that encourages him to bury his nose in her hair, breathe in and fill his lungs with everything that he has.
(Everything that he has left to lose.)
“We’ll take it day by day then see what we can do. We don’t need to rush this.”
He hums. “Isn’t that how you were approaching today? Taking this minute by minute? How are those breathing exercises I saw you googling doing for ya?”
MJ gently pinches his arm in warning.
“Did the time pass okay?” He snorts, descending into a full-bellied laugh as her fingers begin to tickle his side as punishment.
“It’d go a hell of a lot quicker if you used that super strength to pull your weight!”
The apartment takes another three weeks to properly get set-up. Time moves differently since the snap. With less people everything moved at a slower pace, the city itself seemed to almost stop like without the commotion bustling in the streets no one needed to rush as much as they did before. Maybe they were all still grieving, maybe it was the actual mechanics of it. Processes couldn’t function the way they used to.
Peter is certain that he can’t function the way he did before either.
Grief is a feeling that he was unfortunately very familiar with. He knew how to exist with it. After his parents and Ben, and Ned’s grandfather and May’s aunt, he could stare it down and sit with it. Grief existed in his home, had a place at every dinner table he ever sat at. It joined him for every big moment and every tear shed.
This time around, it sits out the corner of his eye. It haunts him. It appears in the mirror before his eyes can properly focus, it startles him.
They live out of his childhood bedroom for a month and a half because he can’t confront the idea of packing May’s room. The smell of her lingers in there, tricking him into believing she’s still around. His grief becomes an apparition and he knows that they need the room.
It still takes him a while.
“I found a job.” He tells MJ, a compromise in the meantime. “A tutor. Schools aren’t open yet, but there’s some parents that want their kids to ‘keep up’, you know? And I know it’s not much but it’s something–”
“It’s something.” She agrees, placing her hand over his and guiding it further down her abdomen. They think it’s still early for the baby, their impossible little ball of life, to be kicking, but there’s movement that MJ tries to put into words for him or helps him chase the feeling.
It happens a lot after she’s eaten or when she’s sat down for too long. These movements are usually accompanied by giddy phrases such as ‘they like bagels’, or ‘they’re bored’. The smallest little butterflies in her stomach, proving that something is growing in the wake of this global pause.
Signs of life.
“Maybe we can use my first paycheck to get takeout again? That Korean place we liked has set a re-opening date.”
MJ hums, pleased. Whether it was stress or something else, her cravings had been out in full force the last couple of weeks, but shipping delays and lack of stock had made it difficult to fulfil any of those needs. Half the restaurants in town still weren’t open, and no one knew if that was because they didn’t have the staff or the supply.
“Will they have sit-in dining again?”
“Maybe.”
“We could do that. I think I need to see something other than our apartment and the office.”
Peter considers it not sure how ready he is to accept that the world is continuing outside this little bubble of theirs. That would mean the impossible– that the world exists without the people he loves.
He swallows the lump in his throat. He can see a shadow in the corner of the room. “Yeah, we should try that.”
Signs of life.
The world starts to change and level out. The panic dies down and people find a way of existing with all the differences. All it took was four months.
Peter moves on from tutoring to working in a school. There’s a rigidness to the routine that he never would have expected to sustain in the past; he starts at eight and he finishes at four, bringing essays and exams home to mark at the very same table where he used to complete them as a child.
MJ keeps working too. Her faint ambitions of changing industries vanish as she decides to stick with journalism because, through it all, her paycheck has never faltered - people always need the news and she tells him every few weeks that she’s happy where she is and that restarting her career just before she got pregnant was a recipe for disaster. She claims it all worked out for the better.
When the theatres open back up again, he catches her looking wistfully at the adverts that run in her paper.
People call it ‘normal’ despite how different it all is.
Peter can’t bring himself to think there’s a normal where May and Ned aren’t a part of his life. They’re a constant he had never thought he’d live without. He doesn’t think it’s normal nor does he think it’s better, but Peter keeps doing what he always has - he keeps going.
This is just life.
He tries to remember that there are good things as a part of that life; he has MJ, and they’re living together. They’re the best they’ve ever been and he tries not to think too hard about how the lack of Spider-Man has helped them get to that point. They have their baby who’s growing and giving MJ grief daily with how active they are and how much they dictate her dietary choices.
Peter has always had a small family. He supposes that things are still relatively ‘normal’ in that regard.
The only place that seems untouched by the changes going on in the outside world, both with their lull and the impact on existence is the Avengers Compound - somewhere Peter didn’t ever see himself returning to.
Getting an appointment with their doctor is hellish. Due to the pregnancy, MJ has some luck at getting scheduled when she’s meant to but they’re lacking the amount of check-ups and scans that Peter would like.
He is mildly paranoid to say the least. Even if it weren’t for the apocalypse they’d lived through, their baby was his half spider-y DNA and he didn’t know the complications that came with that. Regular appointments without hours waiting on the phone would be nice.
He does have an easy solution to that but it isn’t one that he takes advantage of until MJ develops a cough and can't even get through to their doctor - attempting to head to a walk-in was just asking for an all day wait.
MJ doesn’t voice it, but Peter can see she’s scared. Aside from the end of the world, this is the first real concern they’ve had during her pregnancy. It is probably minor, nothing to worry about, just a cold like any other. The ‘but’ and ‘what if’ of it all looms over them like a dark cloud until Peter’s driving them upstate to the compound - the pride and guilt that had stopped him from returning there sooner buried deep down inside of him under something fiercer - anything he wanted came second to their child.
He’d do whatever he could for them. For MJ.
Even if it meant sitting in a building now owned by Pepper Potts using the facilities she pays for and allowing her doctors to check on his wife and his child, all the while knowing that he had watched her husband die.
Shockingly, the compound itself is busy; there’s always been more going on than just The Avengers. Peter never spent long enough there to understand the ins and outs of all the activity, just knew that Tony, as ever, had his fingers in a lot of pies.
Peter had expected that with half the team… gone (dead), without Tony as a figurehead of the ‘legal’ team that things might quieten down. However, that isn't the case. There are still people bustling in the halls and troops running training regimes in the yard. SHEILD operatives if he had to take a guess, or maybe Sam had taken up residence here-- it wasn't like he'd been picking up any of those calls to know his whereabouts. Looking at all their drills and routines, leaves a sour taste in Peter's mouth, knowing it wasn't enough then and it isn't enough now-- what they're doing here will have no impact where it matters; people in the city are still struggling; the housing market practically collapsed and the resulting desperation has led to a surge in crime on a petty and more organised level. People are grabbing at whatever power they can to feel stronger in a world that's proven it won't always be kind.
While he waits for MJ to finish up her appointment - a more in-depth check-up than he’d thought they might get but is grateful they decide to do. Everything that regular doctors can’t check for is done on MJ, forcing Peter out into the hall while they talk and the examinations continue, he discovers that Pepper Potts still haunts these halls also.
Peter doesn’t know what he expected to see of Pepper now that Tony’s gone. He has paid her the same amount of attention as he has everyone else that has been impacted by his mistakes and lack of action - the guilt is a knotted ball in his chest that he can’t ever confront for too long. Through general conversation, he knows that Stark Industries has been doing their part to rebuild everything, that their factories are back up to full production, that their stock shares have been fluctuating with the seasons just as everything else.
Somehow, seeing her in an ironed shirt and slacks, heels clicking against the shiny floor with pin-straight strawberry blonde hair, looking like she was pulled straight from the cover of ‘Business Insider’, is a surprise to him.
“Ms. Potts.” He croaks in greeting. His eyes avert, maybe out of shame or maybe from hope that if he looks away then she might disappear and he can avoid this all entirely - it wouldn’t be the first time that it’d happened.
“Peter.” She replies. Her voice comes out in a huff, sounding slightly out of breath. “I heard you were here, I was hoping I’d catch you.”
“Is everything alright, Ms. Potts.”
“Pepper, please. We’ve known each other long enough.”
Peter just assumed that familiarity went out the window when he let her husband die.
“And everything’s fine. I just wanted to check in with you. Have some tea, maybe? It’s been a while since we last spoke.” Pepper looks back towards the Med Bay, the clear wall has turned opaque since MJ has been inside, blocking her from Peter’s view and maintaining privacy. “Could we have some tea while you wait? Or coffee? I’ll have someone escort Michelle over once she’s done.”
“I’d prefer to stay nearby.”
“You’ll be alerted the second there is any update, Peter. I assure you. Your comfort here is important too–” She hesitates. “It’s important to me that you still feel welcomed and safe here. For both yourself and your family.”
“I haven’t really needed any of the facilities in a while.”
“I noticed. Maybe you can tell me more about that?”
Her questions don’t give any room for him to say no.
Pepper’s office is sparse and reaffirms his assumption that she has spent as much time here in recent months as he has. The room is clean and free from dust, entirely useable, just missing the small bits and pieces that once sat on her desk. There no identifiable photos on the walls, just stock imagery that some designer picked out rather than Pepper’s assistant.
“I’m sorry this feels so formal, I don’t really know who treks along the common areas.” She explains, kindly taking the seat next to him at her desk rather than the one opposite. “How have you been?”
“Busy. We moved, had to get new jobs and you know, prepping for the baby. People tell me that you just need to keep them alive in the first couple weeks but damn, they require a lot of stuff to be kept alive.”
“I’ve heard that.” Pepper agrees. “You seem to be doing well, though. I apologise for not staying in touch with you more. Surprising how little time you actually get when the world stops and people still expect you to have the answers.”
“You don’t need to apologise, Ms– Pepper. Really.” He rushes in. “I would prefer if you didn’t. It– I’m the one who owes you an apology. More than I can say. I should have– I– He’s–”
Pepper’s face drops into a sad smile, reaching out and squeezing his knee. “He would be proud of you. Tony has been for a long time.”
“He’s dead because of me.”
Her face turns more pitying. It stings. The sympathy she is offering him stabs and grinds away at the wall he has been building over the last few months; every step that he has taken forward towards this future that he has managed to maintain suddenly begins to look like a betrayal to everyone who has lost someone else too.
“You’ve been at this a long time, Peter. I know Tony had a tendency to forget that and only focus on your age - something I can’t fault him for. You should have been allowed more of your childhood than you were given - but I think the one thing you forget, and something Tony often forgot too was that you’re just one person. One incredibly smart and brave person, but one person nonetheless. It isn’t on you. Tony was always going to be involved in that fight, and we always knew he was going to face someone he couldn’t beat. That isn’t on you.”
“It isn’t fair, though.”
“It isn’t.” Pepper agrees, “But neither you or I were the ones that stacked the odds. We’re just doing our part to make something out of our losses because we weren’t the only ones that faced them. We have to keep going.”
Pepper’s words are an absolution of guilt that Peter can’t welcome in. They are everything he needed to hear and also everything he can’t quite accept. Pepper is looking at this from her own position; she’s the CEO of Stark Industries - she can do something, even when everything has fallen away, she’s still going.
All Peter has done is run and hide. He has tried to protect what is his alone and that is beginning to look a lot like selfishness.
The difference between them can be neatly defined by this: If Pepper had seen his lounge with the cobwebs and the dust gathering on top of them, she wouldn’t have cleared them away either but paid someone else to do it. Meanwhile, Peter has left that little spider in his corner, taking weeks to sweep away the ghosts of the others that’d come before him.
“Sorry for the interruption, Ms. Potts.” A voice chimes out, stopping Pepper from saying anything more. “Miss Watson has requested Mr Parker’s presence back in the examination room.”
Peter is already making a move to stand when Pepper replies with a smile, her eyes glancing upwards. “Thank you, FRIDAY.”
Her words make him pause briefly, the pull to his girlfriend and his child halted from the surprise.
“That’s FRIDAY?” He finds himself asking, playing back the quiet announcement over in his mind. Her voice is bodiless and more robotic than Peter has ever heard it. For a second, he doubts it is even her and not some other automated assistant. Like without Tony around she’s lost a piece of herself, the character and charm that he embedded into each AI that he created.
Ironically enough, that makes her a little more human in Peter’s eyes. It’s a feeling that he can relate to intimately. One that he can’t escape from either.
“I appreciate that you likely already have a birth plan with your current practitioner, but I would recommend that you consider switching your plan around so that we could accommodate any– unforeseen circumstances.” Dr. Shruti explains. She had trained under Helen Cho, been friends with her. She’s the only one of her team left that Peter can remember by name.
“Unforeseen circumstances? I thought you said everything was okay with the baby? That they’re looking healthy?” Peter asks immediately His shoulders drop and chest fills with something dark and toxic. The dread he swallows back daily beginning to swim and drown every part of him. It is only quietened by MJ’s hand reaching out and resting on his forearm. Her thumb finds its way under his shirt and brushes the underside of his wrist. Quiet and gentle, but there Grounding him.
“The baby’s fine. You saw them. They’re huge . It’s just that Dr. Shruti was saying that, well– this might not be the only complication we have, you know? No one’s had Spider-Man’s baby before.”
Peter watches Dr. Shruti’s face carefully as MJ speaks, trains his ear to listen to her heart, overly conscious of any ticks or jumps, any indication that there’s something he’s missed and some reason to worry. Nothing changes. The doctor remains calm and unaffected. She doesn’t flinch or twitch at MJ’s words so he slowly turns his attention away from her and towards his girlfriend.
Reflected in MJ’s face he sees the same worry and dread that are crawling in his chest. As soon as their eyes meet, she attempts to swallow it back down, hide it from him but he knows her too well. They haven’t come this far without them seeing the worst of each other and living out the fears they refuse to talk about. His ability to read her is one that’s been hard earned through plenty of break-ups and plenty more reunions. Fight and recovery.
MJ is scared of the uncertainty.
There is an unknown that lingers over their little spark of hope, a complication that Peter has brought into the equation due to that spider bite– just another apology he needs to add to his growing stack of them– so he snuffs out the parts of him that are demanding they leave, never wanting to look Pepper in the eye again or listen to the hollowness of FRIDAY’s voice.
He has to take responsibility. He has to do something good for her, for his child, make amends somehow.
“Of course we’ll come back here.” He tels her, switching their hands around to hold her and dropping a kiss to the top of her head. He talks like there isn’t any other option, because in his mind there isn’t. “Whatever you need. Pepper said we’re welcome anytime, we could make sure your mom’s situated here with us a couple days beforehand–”
“My mom isn’t coming to the birth, Pete. I’m meant to be relaxed during labour.” She laughs weakly, parts of her face softening like he’d told a joke although he isn’t sure there was a punchline in anything he’d just said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.” she adds on in a quieter voice.
“Definitely don’t.” He repeats, kissing her head once again. “You don't have anything to be sorry for.”
“I am really sorry we have to go back there.” MJ tells him after they’ve been driving in silence for twenty minutes. Her head is pressed against the window, with her eyelids drooping while her hand cradling the swell of her stomach. She’s started trading a lot of her shirts for his, th bagginess of them giving her a little more room, hiding her bump under oversized jumpers the rest of the time, determined to spend as little money as possible on maternity wear. Rain patters against the car, a chill seeping through the cheap aircon but something about her looks so warm– or maybe that’s just how she makes Peter feel.
Warm. Better. Whole.
“Why are you apologising?” Peter asks. The further away they get from the facility, the more easily he smiles at the sight of her, at everything. The roads ahead are completely bare, only forest lining their way home. Out here, the quiet doesn’t feel so obtrusive. It is exactly where it’s meant to be and not a muted version of the city he’s called home for some many years.
“You’ve been avoiding them.”
“Not very many of them left to avoid there anyway.”
“Not what I meant.” MJ yawns. “I don’t like it either. Don’t like the idea of…”
“Of?”
“Waiting there again.”
Peter’s head snaps to look at her but MJ’s focus has moved to outside the window, even int he faint reflection she refuses to meet his gaze.
He’d forgotten that he wasn’t the only one with memories there. His were all a little more lively. MJ only knows the facility for all the times Peter’s wound up in a bed there– for the weeks she was waiting there for even just an ounce of news, unsure if he was even alive.
“I’ll be with you. The entire time. Unless you kick me out and then I’m gonna be like a sad puppy at the door. You’re not gonna be alone, MJ.”
Not this time.
The promise doesn’t soothe the scars that their past have left them with, but it’s a gentle balm to remind them that things are a little different now. Better in some ways and worse in others, yes, but– different. They have to make that mean something.
“Woah.” Peter gasps as he creeps up behind one of his students, carefully to keep his footfall silent on his approach and taking just the smallest amount of joy when they startle, eyes wide as they turn to face them shielding their paper just a bit too late. “I’m all for creative license but I don’t think that’s the answer to question five, Mr. Kaplin.”
Reggie leant a little further over his answer booklet, cheeks turning red and determinedly averting his gaze from his seatmate who was trying to hide their laughter.
The classroom is big enough for the kids to have a table to themselves even with class sizes doubled up - the Sophomores at this school were the smallest year group in the school. Thanos had said his method was indiscriminate. Looking at it now, it seems plain unfair - many of the kids still opt to sit with their friends, two by two on the workbenches, squabbling when they enter and providing Peter free entertainment and gossip to bring home to MJ when their unspoken seating chart changes.
“I’m always here if you need help.” He says gently.
“I’m fine.” Reggie grumbles. “Just distracted.”
“Maybe focus on the equations and leave the art ‘til lunch, huh? Though, it’s good. Good uh– shading. Who you drawing.”
“Daredevil.” Reggie mumbles. Peter frowns, sure that he’s heard him wrong.
Casey next to him speaks up. “Daredevil. Reg is certain that he saw him a few night ago. I think he just saw a bug.”
A single innocuous comment has Peter reeling. Since leaving the suit behind, he hadn’t even thought to seek out Matt. He’d tried briefly to get in contact with Felicia but that’d been had dead end. It was too hard to tell if that was because she had been snapped or because she’d used the chaos as a golden ticket away from whatever trouble she’d caused for herself. Thinking about the options made him too tense to try looking for anyone else, and after a while– it was easy to forget the people that worked in the shadows. He had so much else going on.
“You saw him, huh? Doesn’t he only poke his head out late at night, like the boogie man? Shouldn’t you have been in bed?”
“What are you? My dad?”
A titter of giggles sprawl across the room as a few other kids have started to lean over and listen in.
“Mr. Parker’s just getting his practice in!” Jessica coos from one desk over. “How’s the baby, sir?”
“Getting bigger day by day and making my wife more uncomfortable by the minute. We’re counting down the days at this point.”
“When’s she due?”
“Any day now! You wanna see the photo from our latest scan?”
When he starts walking back towards his laptop to pull up the photo, something he’s only passed around the teacher’s lounge and not whipped out at every opportunity like Ned had once joked he would because the people he would have shown are– no longer here, he notices Reggie mouth a shy ‘thank you’ over to Jessica who’s head ducks immediately.
The classroom is a little emptier, words all sounding a little louder as they bounce around the empty space, the kids all look a little older despite how young they really are and yet– there are somethings that will never change.
Signs of life.
The final trimester of pregnancy is not kind to MJ. Up until this point, she’d been handling it with grace, taking every single bout of morning sickness, tension headache and hunger pain and strange craving in her stride like it was nothing. She had watched the apocalypse happen, confronted the thought of losing her partner, lost majority of her family, moved house and done it all while growing a human and only mildly complaining about any of it.
She was a fucking hero in Peter’s eyes.
All the strength she’s shown until now seems to fade. As the baby begins to shift in ehr stomach, preparing themselves to meet the great big world, they throw waves and waves of fatigue in MJ’s direction, give her endless cramps and swollen feet that leave her enable to stand for long. Then the baby refuses to stay still long enough for MJ to even enjoy the baby-inflicted bed rest, leaving her pouty and frustrated.
Peter does what he can, offers all the sympathy in the world but until the baby makes their entrance, it never feels like quite enough. So he compromises, ushering MJ on to the couch and pulling her feet into his lap whenever they’re together, trying to chase away the aches and pains with deft fingers.
Once upon a time these massages had been a rare treat for her. She’d tell him with a laugh that ‘all that swinging has made those hands good for something’ as he’d always deal the right pressure ont he right spot.
It should be nice knowing that these hands of his are still doing good despite the lack of webshooters that they tinker with or the webs that he weaves. It should be nice to know that even without the suit, Peter himself is still able to help.
And yet.
He is living a life that he once thought he could never have. He cursed whatever God was listening for their interruption whenever it seemed within his grasp. He planned nights like these that have now become a commonality and watch them slip between his fingers as this or that distraction arose.
This distorted view of his ‘perfect life’ doesn’t fill him up the way he thought it would. He sits within it like he’s wearing a cheap sweater. The fibres of the wool, scratching and irritating his skin. There is an itch that he can’t quite rid himself of.
“Matt’s alive.” Peter tells MJ on one such night. Its a few days since he’d seen Reggie and his doodle. Its a few days closer to their due date. His life is like that damn sweater again and his skin feels red raw. He doesn’t want to remove it though. “Still wearing the suit.”
“You saw him?”
“No. No, god, no. Haven’t been Hell’s Kitchen way in–” He couldn’t remember. For how quiet life had been, there was so much else going on. “One of my kids apparently did, and I looked him up. His little Urban Legend lives on. Still the thing that goes bump in the night.”
MJ hums. Peter presses his thumb a little harder into the arch of her foot, grinning as the noise transitions into a groan, her head dropping back against the couch.
“Are you gonna go see him?”
“No.” Peter answers immediately, his fingers pause. “We weren’t exactly friends outside the suit. More work colleagues.”
“Work colleagues who bled out together on occasion.”
“That only happened twice. You know, you move on form a job, you say you’ll catch-up in the future and you never do. That’s how corporate America wants us. I’m just living the American Dream right now.”
“Uh huh.” MJ mumbles, shifting until she’s sitting up to look at him seriously. “And that’s what’s happened? You’ve moved on from that job?”
“I haven’t been wearing the suit.” Peter answers defensively, his tone pitching higher and his hackles raising a little. His hands rest on her ankles. “We have a baby on the way.”
Her head drops to rest against the back of the couch as she studies him, eyes soft and lacking any judgement although he thinks he probably deserves it. In her expression, he finds more understanding than he feels entitled to, wishing that he could just be normal for her. Wishing he could give her something that was a little easier to navigate than all of the baggage he carries.
“I kow we do.” She tells him. “And they have a good dad looking out for them.”
“A better mom.” He replies.
“True.” She smiles teasingly. “But let's not make it a contest. They’ve got a dad who came from space for them… To have someone who’s always gonna come back like that? That means something.”
Between the two of them, they’re all this baby has left. His skin might itch and there might be a tug on his heart, but– there are things he can’t risk. He tries his hardest to tell MJ exactly that but her expression doesn’t shift– tired and understanding, concerned but– settled.
She seems to realise before he does that if Peter were truly done he wouldn’t have mentioned Daredevil at all. The knowledge that a part of his old life still existed somewhere in the city was both a comfort and a warning for them both– they could only run so far before it caught back up to them.
Out of the two of them, MJ was the one more prepared for that simple fact.
Peter wanted to exist in denial for a little longer, pretend he could be someone who stuck around. The question remained whether that made him someone that his child would be proud of.
Parker Luck swoops down with a vicious chuckle, deciding when better to give him his answer than right there and then. MJ’s face shifts, swallowing uncomfortably as her had moves back over her stomach, following the hard line of their baby’s back.
“I– Pete, I think we should start driving out to the compound. I-I’m gonna call Dr. Shruti.”
"It's time?" He asks. That familiar dread creeps up in his chest again. He isn't ready. His eyes flit about the apartment, trying to remember where they put the hospital bag and remembering that they hadn't built the crib just yet. They were meant to have another week before they even thought about driving to the facility. They aren't ready.
The worry takes on a different shape as he comes to the realisation that the next time they enter this apartment everything is going to be different. They're going to be different. They're going to parents. Officially.
The goodbye he whispers to the apartment as they leave is a little different than normal, not asking the ghosts that haunt their home to vanish but to just-- maybe be a little quieter upon their return. They'll have a baby, after all. They'll need to the quiet and they'll need Peter present. Everyone will still be behind him, he needs to stop glancing back-- at least for a little while-- and just hope that they're with him in how he acts, knowing already that any idea he has about being a 'good parent' came from May and Ben. The unconditional love he knows he'll feel because Ned shared it with him endlessly-- that won't change.
"It's time." MJ confirms.