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Peter’s day was not going well. Which was not unusual, per se, but disappointing nonetheless.
What was unusual was the fact his mundane, peaceful morning had gone so wrong so quickly and Spider-Man had nothing to do with it.
If he traced the events back to when it all began, he’d have to say the downfall of his quiet weekend had actually been set in motion a week and a half earlier when Felicia had offhandedly reminded him of her monthly brunch with her mother.
“We’re making a day out of it,” she explained as she carefully brushed her still-wet hair in front of their steam-condensed bathroom mirror, “I won’t be home until dinner.”
This in and of itself was also not unusual, as Felicia very often stayed out all day when she met with her mother. Brunch turned into shopping, shopping turned into a matinee show on Broadway, Broadway turned into happy hour at a nearby bar, and happy hour turned into Felicia walking her mom home before coming back just in time for dinner.
(Not including the few occasions that walk home turned into Felicia’s eyes wandering into shop windows and snagging a nice necklace to wear at next month’s brunch.)
“You should have Ben over to catch up while I’m out,” she suggested, though Peter knew that it was less of a suggestion and more of an order that was surely an attempt to get him to participate in her latest scheme to keep his personal life outside of Spider-man intact and flourishing.
“Sure,” Peter had hummed, choosing not to call her out on her authoritarian management of his social calendar, “I’ll call him tomorrow.”
And so he had. He’d rung Ben up and invited him over for coffee on a previously unimportant Saturday morning and marked himself for doom as soon as he’d set the reminder on his calendar app.
When Ben had arrived on Saturday morning at half past ten Peter had still been fairly optimistic about his day. He’d straightened up the house, put the coffee pot on, placed the coasters out on Felicia’s fancy coffee table, and even ran out to the store to pick up one of those sewing tins with the cookies in them. So, in other words, he was a damn good host and proud.
He was a little surprised at how put together Ben looked when he arrived. His clothes underneath his worn leather jacket were ironed and neat, his face clean-shaven, and when Peter stood up a little straighter to peek at his hair he was impressed to see a lack of brown root peeking through Ben’s hair.
“You’re looking good,” Peter commented as he stood aside to let Ben in, “Nice jacket.”
“Thanks,” Ben hummed, pulling it off to hang on the coat rack, “It’s yours.”
“Of course it is,” Peter muttered, turning to look at the jacket to try and remember when or where Ben might’ve snagged it from without him noticing, “Coffee?”
Ben nodded, bending one knee to gesture dramatically to the kitchen, “After you, my liege .”
“I’m regretting this already, just so we’re clear.”
It was all very cliche, Peter observed to himself as he poured them both a cup of coffee into the matching Captain America novelty mugs that Miles had gotten him for teacher appreciation week. He’d never really seen himself as the kind of person to have a calm morning coffee in his own house with a clone-brother-friend-whatever figure on a Saturday morning. Next, he was going to get a golden retriever and a white picket fence.
“What have you been up to?” Ben asked, fingers tapping on the countertop as Peter stirred the sugar into each cup. It was funny the way he did that, just a beat off from the way Peter always drummed his own fingers against his desk when reaching a lull in whatever lecture he was giving his students at the moment.
“Prepping for the end of the semester,” Peter groaned, “and suburban domesticity. I think the neighbors want us over for a barbeque.”
“ Riveting,” Ben said, taking his mug from Peter’s outstretched hands and following behind him as he made his way through the kitchen and into the living room, “And Spider-man?”
“Good. Fine,” Peter shrugged, “Uneventful, actually. I know I’m supposed to be taking a step back, but I’m honestly starting to get a little worr-”
It was cruel luck that at that very moment his spidey-senses tingled in the back of his mind (and Ben’s if the look on his face was any indication) and something came soaring through the living room window and directly into Felicia’s entirely glass lamp in the corner of the room, leaving a cartoonishly brick-shaped hole in the big opaque glass box of the lampshade.
“ Wow. Impeccable aim and it didn’t even shatter,” Ben quipped as Peter desperately tried not to let out a big-bad-wolf-sized sigh and level what was left of his house.
“Dude!” a very familiar voice squawked from outside Peter’s once unblemished picture window, “When you said you wanted to drop by this isn’t what I had in mind.”
Peter fought back another sigh, dragging his feet as he made his way out the front door to gaze upon the menaces disgracing the sidewalk in front of his damaged home.
“I wanted to get their attention,” Kaine said nonchalantly as Miles stood beside him looking absolutely affronted and motioning between him and the window rather dramatically.
“By throwing a brick through the window?” Miles shouted much louder than he should have considering how unmoved Kaine was by his first outburst.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Alright, alright,” Peter said, desperately trying to regain control of the situation beginning to unfold in front of him.
“You said you wanted to ‘drop by’,” Miles pointed accusingly, completely ignoring Peter, “Throwing bricks through people’s windows isn’t dropping by.”
Kaine paid him no mind, eyes narrowing on Ben over Peter’s shoulder,
“Reilly,” he greeted flatly.
“ Kaine,” Ben said, mocking his tone, “I have a first name, you do know that right? Do they not teach that in whatever sewer drain you crawled out of?”
“I hate you,” Kaine said in lieu of a real response, “And I hope you die. Again.”
Miles just rambled on, neither paying him much mind, “You could kill someone like that! Seriously, what the hell?”
“My fist and your face, Kaine,” Ben scoffed, opening his mouth to fire another rebuttal before Peter interrupted him.
“Enough,” he hissed between his grinding teeth, “Inside, all of you. Now. Before the neighbors come out to vacuum the lawn or walk the fish or something.”
“Well, I’d say it’s been fun, but it hasn’t,” Kaine said, raising a hand in a lazy salute and turning to make a quick escape from the mess he created, “Bye.”
“Oh no you don’t.”
Peter lunged at his back, grabbing Kaine by the collar of his coat like a scruffed cat and dragging him up the front steps. Miles and Ben followed close behind, having the decency to at least look a little ashamed to be seen arguing outside the house like children on a playground.
“Get the fuck off me,” Kaine spat, though he made no real attempt to free himself as Peter shoved him through the front door.
“Sit,” Peter said sternly, depositing Kaine roughly on the glass-littered couch, “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were still in Texas?”
“I really don’t think where I go is any of your business,” Kaine sneered, “I was there, now I’m here, and soon I’ll be back there again. Simple.”
“It is when you show up and wreck people's homes,” Ben muttered into his shoulder under his breath.
“Shove it, Reilly.”
“And where did you come from?” Peter turned to ask Miles, pointedly ignoring Kaine and Ben.
“Well,” he started slowly, “I was in the neighborhood-”
“You’re never in the neighborhood,” Peter said accusingly, “This isn’t your neighborhood, this is my neighborhood.”
“Maybe I wanted to say hello!”
“He noticed me coming through Brooklyn, followed me over the expressway, and then landed on a light post and started hounding me with questions when I pulled over,” Kaine said disinterestedly, “My bike’s a block over.”
“He was speeding,” Miles announced.
“You followed him from Brooklyn to Queens for speeding?” Peter asked incredulously. Speeding wasn’t great, obviously. Not legal, but to swing from Brooklyn all the way along the expressway and this deep into Queens was a bit much, even for Peter.
“He was speeding suspiciously, ” Miles elaborated as if that cleared anything up whatsoever.
“Right.”
“He was!”
“ Anyways ,” Peter continued, “Why the brick , Kaine?”
“I already told you,” he replied, “I wanted to get your attention.”
Peter sighed, pinching between his ruffled brows with one hand and trying not to groan, “Right. Okay, I don’t have the patience for your weird teen-angst-esqe stubbornness right now. Clearly, you’re not cracking. I get it.”
“That lamp is,” Ben whistled, hand on his hips as he surveyed the scene, “Yikes.”
Peter turned his attention back to the lamp to inspect the damage. He leaned down to peer through the brick-sized hole and found himself relieved that the damage hadn’t been too bad. It seemed that only a single side of the big rectangular shade and the bulb housed inside had broken. The brick itself was lying in the center on the pile of glass that had once been the bulb. The chunk of glass missing from the glass was still fairly intact considering the circumstances, split almost evenly into three pieces.
“Well,” he sighed, reaching into the hole to remove the brick and retrieve what was now missing from the lampshade, “It could be worse. The window must’ve slowed its momentum.”
“Maybe I can fix it,” Miles said as he tried to get a better look over Peter’s head, “I could try zapping it back together. Maybe the pieces will melt back together if I’m careful.”
“Will that work?” Ben asked skeptically, “It’s not gonna explode into a million bits?”
“Dunno,” Miles shrugged as Peter passed him the glass shards, “Worth a shot though, right? Like welding.”
“Go for it,” Peter said defeatedly, “Why not? Who even cares anymore?”
Miles seemed to take that as a much more enthusiastic go-ahead than it actually was, holding one piece up against the broken edge with one hand and putting the tip of his index finger against the line where it touched the other. His face set in clear determination and his hands were as still as one could expect. He took a deep inhale before the corner of the room exploded in light, the sound of shattering glass sending Peter’s ears ringing.
“Uh oh.”
To say the lamp was destroyed was an absolute understatement. The glass box that housed the bulb was now a pile of glass dust, and Peter was pretty certain the wooden base of the lamp was smoking.
“Nice job dumb, dumber, and dumbest,” Kaine scoffed from the couch, picking his way through Peter’s cookie tin, “ Now who broke the lamp?”
“Can it, Kaine.”
“Sorry, Pete,” Miles coughed, standing and wiping the glass dust onto his pants, “I really thought that would work.”
“It’s fine, Miles,” He sighed, “Maybe we can find a replacement. Felicia won’t be home ‘til dinner. We’ve got time.”
“There’s a furniture store six blocks from here,” Ben suggested, “Maybe she got it from around here.”
Peter nodded, “Perfect. If we hurry we can get back we can clean the glass and find a dumpster nice and far to dump the evidence in.”
“Awesome,” Kaine grumbled, reaching forward to grab the TV remote off of the coffee table, “You guys do that. Have fun.”
“Why do you get to stay back? This is kind of all your fault,” Miles said.
“You just detonated a floor lamp, I don’t want to hear it,” Kaine fired back. Miles frowned, opening his mouth to shoot off his own rebuttal before Peter interrupted him,
“Miles, go get a roll of duct tape and a tarp from the garage. I need you to tape the window up before we go.”
Miles slumped defeatedly, dragging his feet as he disappeared down the hall, shooting one last glare as a ghost of a grin appeared on Kaine’s face.
“I don’t know why you think you’re getting out of this,” Peter directed at him, “Let’s go, now. Please and thank you.”
“If I knew you were going to make me run errands with you,” Kaine started before reeling backward away from Peter’s hand as he reached for the back of his coat once more and sinking deeper into the couch, “I would’ve aimed for your head .”
Ben scoffed at that, making his way to the coat rack where his jacket still hung and pulling it off and around his shoulders in a single sweep,
“This is really your fault, so like it or not you’re coming. That and no sane person is letting you run around New York without a chaperone if you’re just here to break shit.”
“Fine,” Kaine spat, hesitating for a moment before adding on a quick, “But we’re stopping for lunch first.”
He stood with a stretch, trying his best to step over the glass on the carpet and grimacing a little as his shoes crunched loudly.
“And stop trying to order me around, I’m the older clone, smartass.”
Walking the six blocks to the furniture store was a much bigger ordeal than Peter would’ve liked. The fifteen-minute walk took a whopping forty-five minutes, with frequent stops that were making Peter desperately wish he’d left Ben, Miles, and Kaine sitting on the couch with the TV on the Saturday morning cartoons to keep them from destroying anything else.
“Please,” Peter begged as Kaine purposely read the menu of a taco truck slowly out loud, “Please can we just go to the furniture store? It’s just around the corner.”
“You said we’d stop for lunch,” Kaine said smugly, “I’m stopping for lunch.”
“I hate you. So, so much.”
Kaine waved him off, “You’re distracting me. Now I’m going to have to start over.”
“ Kaine. ”
“Fine.”
Luckily for Peter, Kaine conceded in their battle of wills, ordered a burrito, and didn’t annoyingly insist they sit to have lunch. Instead, he trailed behind the others as they continued onward to the furniture store, paying no mind to them as they shuffled through the door (despite Ben’s whispered, angry scolding that the sign on the front of the door said ‘no outside food or drinks’ and Kaine was going to get them all kicked out).
Unluckily for Peter, the furniture store had a piss-poor collection of lamps, and not a single one came close to Felicia’s.
“Can’t we just look the lamp up?” He said as they exited the store and continued on their journey, “It can’t be that hard.”
“Yeah, Kaine,” Ben volun-told him, “Look it up.”
Kaine only grunted in response, patting himself down before shoving a hand into the pocket and then pulling out what could only be described as a fossil.
Of course, Kaine used a phone with an actual, physical slide-out keyboard. Of course, he did.
Luckily for Peter, Miles and Ben both had the good sense not to comment on Kaine’s fugly flip phone and instead exchanged incredulous glances from where they were standing. Kaine paid them no mind, typing with the speed (and squinted expression) of a man thrice his age until finally, he had an address.
An address forty minutes away in midtown Manhattan. Just their luck.
Despite the whining from both Ben and Miles and the death glare from Kaine, it wasn’t the hardest trip into the city. Sure, it took two trains and a bit of walk, but Peter thought things could’ve been much, much worse. For example, the E train could’ve derailed over the East River and they all could’ve been stuck inside their car and drowning to death in filthy, city run-off river water. So, see? So far so good.
“I can’t believe we came all the way to Midtown for this,” Miles sighed, stretching his arms above his head as they made their way up the steep stairway out of the station, “Are you sure the lamp is at this exact store, Kaine? Is it even in stock?”
“No,” Kaine said bluntly.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” Ben asked, head whipping around to stare at Kaine, coming to a harsh stop in the middle of the sidewalk, “You were supposed to find a store that had it!”
Peter - somehow the responsible one in this situation - stopped as well, pulling an unnoticing Ben by the arm to remove him from the middle of the sidewalk where he was disturbing the commutes of the mildly annoyed people around them.
“I don’t know if they have it, I don’t even know how to use this thing,” Kaine said, waving the phone around.
“You don’t know how to work a phone?” Miles questioned, “You do know what year it is, right?”
“Give me that,” Peter said, snatching the phone out of Kaine’s hand, “Wh- Did you just google ‘lamp store’?!”
“That doesn’t say ‘lamp store’,” Ben corrected from where he was reading over Peter’s shoulder, “That says ‘lamp stire .’”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Kaine challenged defensively, “You wanted a new lamp, I found a lamp store. You’re welcome.”
“Did you get dropped on the top of your test tube as a fetal clone?” Ben asked with faux curiosity, “No really, I’m genuinely curious.”
“ Bite me. ”
At this rate, they were never going to find the lamp, Peter thought to himself despondently. He shifted his weight between his feet, willing himself not to knock all three of his fellow lamp hunters out cold and then himself afterward,
“Right. Well, we’re only a seven-minute walk away and this store sells exclusively lighting features, so if there was ever going to be a store with the same exact lamp this would be it, right?”
“Exactly,” Kaine agreed, “I don’t know why you’re all being so anal about this.”
“ You’re anal,” Ben taunted, “and bald.”
“You’re gonna look just like me one day,” Kaine sneered back, “Gonna cook that fried mop of feathers you call hair right off your head with all that bleach. The fumes will make your eyes water so bad you won’t see it until it’s too late.”
“Please just get inside the store."
“What about that one, Pete?” Ben asked, gesturing vaguely to an only partially similar floor lamp sitting on one of the shelves as they all shuffled inside
It was sort of like Felicia’s old one: rectangular, tall-ish, wood base. Other than that it really didn’t resemble the one that had previously resided in the living room corner. The panels were fabric instead of the yellow stained glass and the wood was the wrong color, not to mention this lamp was cool-toned instead of the homey warm-toned light the previous one had. At best it would be a good “sorry-we-exploded-your-lamp” gift.
“Peter, Peter, Peter,” Kaine mocked, smacking the back of Ben’s head as they made their way down the aisle, “Do you need Peter to pick your outfit for the first day of kindergarten, too? Be an individual. Be your own person, Reilly.”
“Be my own person? You should be your own person. You pick every part of your personality by doing the exact opposite of what Peter or I choose to do. It's like you have an imaginary ‘What would Peter and Ben do?’ bracelet on your wrist at all times to not listen to,” Ben retorted.
Miles groaned, hands clamped over his ears,
“Someone out there please strike me down so I don’t have to listen to this constant back and forth anymore. Storm, Thor, anyone please.”
“Zip it, all of you,” Peter warned, “Stay here and stay quiet while I find someone to get that lamp for us. I mean it.”
He backed out of the aisle slowly, motioning with two fingers back and forth to show them he was keeping an eye out. Children, all three of them. Is this how everyone else felt around him all the time? No wonder no one ever asked him to join their superhero garage bands.
“Maybe I need to send a few apology letters,” he muttered to himself, “or maybe an edible arrangement or something.”
Maybe he could get Felicia an edible arrangement to apologize for obliterating her lamp.
“Excuse me,” Peter waved a hand at the indifferent-looking teenage employee - Ally, her nametag read - leaning against the front register, “I think we’ve picked one out.”
She looked only mildly annoyed as she left her post and followed Peter towards where he’d left the others. Small mercies.
As they rounded the corner to find the lamp, Miles walked past them, calling a quick, “I’ll just meet you outside, Pete” over his shoulder before Peter had a chance to ask him where he was going. He almost had the sense to go after him before turning back to where he’d come from.
“Wha-”
Ben and Kaine were still where he had left them, their arms locked onto each other’s shoulders, clearly trying to wrestle one another into the nearest shelf with whatever strength they could use in public. Kaine pulled back and then shoved forward again before bringing a knee up swiftly into Ben’s stomach.
“Oof.”
The employee was quiet for a moment, clearly too underpaid to deal with things of this caliber. She looked back and forth at the two, clearly undeterred by the fact they were being watched, before finally turning to Peter,
“I think I’m going to have to ask you all to leave, sir.”
Peter groaned, head in his hands and voice muffled and anguished, “Can I at least buy a lamp first?”
Kaine yelped as Ben whacked him in the face with his elbow, stumbling backward and furiously holding his now-bleeding nose,
“You son of a-”
“Actually,” Peter corrected tiredly before anything else could go horribly, horribly wrong, “I think we’ll just be going now.”
Well, at least he could say he tried.
Miles waited for them outside, scrolling through his phone and almost certainly pretending he couldn’t hear Peter struggling to pry Kaine and Ben apart for the better part of five minutes before the store manager came along and threatened to call the police.
“I just want you to know, I had nothing to do with that,” Miles proclaimed as Peter walked past him, “Listen, I think I found another stor-”
“No. No more stores. I give up,” He interrupted wearily, “I’ve decided I’m just going to grovel.”
“How fitting for you,” Kaine sniffed, placing a hand on Peter’s shoulder with mock sympathy.
Peter just groaned, head down as he kept walking toward their station.
By the time they made it back, the sun was already down and Peter was sure Felicia would be home any minute now. Ben took the initiative to drag what parts of the lamp were still standing out to the curb, and Kaine didn't put up too much of a fuss when Miles made him vacuum up what little glass was left on the floor after he'd finished sweeping. Peter was almost thankful they had exhausted themselves searching for a new lamp as they were (mostly) calm and collected when Felicia's tell-tale fidgeting at the lock was heard through the door.
“Honey, I’m home,” Her sing-song voice called from the foyer.
"Hi, Fel," Peter greeted as he peeled himself away from the couch and towards the front door.
“Have a good day?” Felicia asked, oblivious to his exhaustion as she pulled off her heels.
“Something like that,” he replied, “Listen, Fel-”
“Did you leave a candle lit too long in the living room or something?” she frowned at him, “Why does it smell like smoke in here?”
“About that…” he started, leaning to the side as she tried to look over his shoulder and down the hallway.
“Before you go in there,” he said warningly, hands held up placatingly, “Kaine threw a brick through the window today and broke your lamp-”
“Kaine’s here?”
“And then,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “Miles tried to fix it but he kind of just exploded it into a million bits and now it smells a little funny and-”
“ Miles is here?”
“-And we found a close-but-not-really replacement but we got kicked out of the store and couldn’t buy it.”
“Which wasn’t my fault, just so we’re clear!” Ben called, voice echoing from the kitchen and a subsequent “Ow!” as Kaine responded with what Peter hoped was only a mild shove.
“Sorry about your lamp, Fel,” He said sheepishly, “I swear we tried to replace it.”
“It wasn’t some ridiculously expensive one-of-a-kind art piece you had shipped over from Europe or something, right?” Miles asked, peeking around the corner.
Felicia’s eyes darted from Peter to Miles and back again before turning her face and blocking her mouth with one hand to stifle her laughter. She took a deep breath to calm herself, clearly fighting to stay composed.
“Peter,” she said as calmly and sympathetically as she could, “That was an Ikea lamp that I pulled the shade off of and put an extra tall decorative vase over.”
“...Oh.”
“Yeah,” she snickered, “‘Oh.’ I appreciate the effort though, lover, really.”
“So, I wasted my day looking all around the city for a lamp that didn’t exist, is what you’re saying?” He asked as she placed a pitying hand on his shoulder and gave him a small nod.
“Great. That’s great,” he said lamely.
“Well!” Felicia exclaimed, clapping her hands together and stepping around Peter as he stood dumbfounded in the entryway, “Since everyone’s already here, how about we order takeout and you all stay for dinner?”