Chapter Text
Peter has never considered himself a man of science.
Okay, scratch that. Peter
had
considered himself a man of science, at some point in his life, before the whole - Dr. Strange and his three Peter’s ordeal.
Now that most of his friends are either dead or have forgotten him, it slipped out of his grasp. Unknowingly, and so gentle that it nearly felt like a breeze on his skin.
Nowadays, Peter works at the Daily Bugle selling pictures of Spider-Man - himself - to make a living. He’ll admit, it feels a little strange, taking pictures of yourself but making them look just a little bad intentionally because his boss won’t accept anything less than making sure the entirety of New York knows what a menace Spider-Man is.
Peter squints through his camera lens, right opposite of what used to be the Avengers Tower, but is now supposedly the New Avengers . He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to capture a picture. Not of Spider-Man, today, but the normalcy of what was once his daily life.
Okay - “daily” is a bit of an overstatement. Peter was in high school, barely seventeen and hell, even denied being part of the Avengers right to Tony’s face at fifteen. He didn’t spend a lot of time in the Tower nor the Compound, for that matter. But it’s about the principle. When Peter walked past the Avengers tower and saw Bucky walk out, he nearly keeled over right then and there. A warm, buzzing feeling spread across his chest, something like a feeling of déjà vu. Maybe an alternate timeline? He’s not crossing out any possibilities.
He knew it wasn’t any of that when Bucky walked over at him, leaning his head against the cold concrete wall and put a gentle (metal) hand on his shoulder. Asked him if he was okay, seeing Peter’s searching eyes, though the gaze was met with nothing but maybe a little pity. When he lies awake at night, done with patrol and staring up at the empty ceiling of his shabby apartment, he imagines that there was a twinge of recognition in the soldier’s face. That anyone would remember who Peter was - even though he’d made damn sure of it that that would never happen again.
Peter clicks the shutter, photographing some people walking past the building. A young boy holding his bookbag, wearing glasses a little too big on his face, and his clothes draping over his still-awkward frame. Peter smiles slightly behind the lens, being reminded of a version of himself he once was.
Another click. A girl, blonde, curly hair, walking arm in arm with her girlfriend, who just listens to her with love in her eyes and gazes at her like she built the entirety of the world. The girl herself doesn’t seem to notice just how lovingly her girlfriend looks at her, as she’s so deep in her story, her girlfriend just steers her in the right direction to make sure she doesn’t bump into anything or any one .
Peter wants to click again, but holds, seeing a familiar face leave the building. Bucky Barnes. He’s on the phone, obviously trying not to talk as loudly but with Peter’s good hearing (this one time he might be thankful for it), it doesn’t matter. He can hear just what the discussion is about.
‘There’s not - no . I don’t think so, Sam. It’s some… No , listen, just forget the whole Avengers copyright thing, alright?’ Peter is about to stop listening even though he does try to keep up with former - colleague (he’s not so sure if he could call them friends), until -
‘It’s some sort of spaceship. An intrusion into our astronomical territory.’ Peter perks up, pulling the lens in and walking along with Bucky, across the street and keeping his focus, though not his gaze, on Bucky’s conversation.
He seems nearly frustrated at the other’s replies, but it only gives Peter more explanation. ‘It’s… this white spaceship. We only know there’s a huge four on the side - very little radio contact. No identification, they only gave us coordinates for landing.’ Bucky’s face twists a little as he keeps on walking, talking through the phone as if Sam would be able to see his face.
Bingo
.
That’s all Peter needs as he continues on to listen to the coordinates and quickly fishes out his phone from his pocket, leaving the camera hanging abandoned around his neck and types down the string of numbers. He stops listening once he’s a hundred percent sure that the numbers are right because he has this itch to help with something more than just a mugging, and also because he doesn’t want to hear where the rest of this call is going. He grimaces as he hears Bucky mutter a string of words into the phone he’s not sure he wants to ever hear again, but certainly not by Bucky.
Peter makes his way down to the subway stairs as soon as he comes across the newest stop, and gets out near his apartment building in muscle memory. He barely has to even look where it’s stopping. Hell, he thinks he could probably fall asleep and his spideysense would wake him up. He has a few pictures - certainly not enough to make Jameson ecstatically happy, but he hopes it’ll do.
When Peter arrives at his apartment, he looks at the pictures on his camera while stalking through the small space that is his ‘living room’, if you could even call it that, divided by half a wall. Once. Twice. The third time he puts the camera down on a shelf, still filled with his old schoolbooks (because while he did have a valid high school diploma, technically, there’s no record of a Peter Parker ever going to Midtown High. Not really), before he stops putting off what he knows he’s really jittering for.
Peter rushes to his laptop (which is funded by his ( technically ) non-existent high-school career) and opens it to a browser. He expectantly ticks in the coordinates, hoping to find some type of place - a facility, maybe? Some kind of space landing shuttle thing , you know, for intergalactic legal.. stuff. Peter bites his bottom lip and catches his reflection in the laptop screen.
His hair is all around, like a cow licked his forehead, his brows furrowed in near-concern or maybe desperation. Peter’s bones ache for anything to bring him back into action, something meaningful . Because now Peter no longer was this fifteen year old boy that Tony Stark had taken under his wing - he’s nearing twenty (not even old enough to drink for fucks sake. Peter drowns out his sorrows by sitting on his couch, sipping a Capri-Sun while binge-watching episodes of Glee) and there’s not a single soul in New York out to defend him.
Well. Maybe Spider-Man, but not Peter Parker.
Peter shuffles in his chair, folding his legs over in some strange sitting position only he’d find comfortable. (MJ might’ve said something about it. ‘There’s no way you’re comfortable sitting like that. You look like a spider,’ Peter would raise his eyebrows and give her a quizzical look until they’d both burst into giggles.) He sees his facial expression harden in the reflection of the laptop as he keeps on scrolling through the vague results.
Huh.
The coordinates lead to some place not too far outside of New York - which, alright, but who is he to judge? Maybe their locator was just a few miles off. Or maybe they didn’t land in the city on purpose . Peter shoves away the thought.
It’s not too far - he’d be able to make this swinging. And who would show up now? The New Avengers? He doesn’t want to judge a book by its cover, but somehow he feels a twinge of doubt. The red of his suit glimmers in the corner of his eye.
Despite Tony Stark’s passing, somehow, Karen keeps up running in his suit just as well as she did when he was alive. Sometimes it gets stuck - sending Peter a notification that Tony’d sent him a message or left a voicemail behind, quickly shooting a cold shudder down his spine before he remembers. He was there, cried on him. Held him.
Peter furiously blinks under the Spider-Man mask, blaming the glassy eyes on the sharp winds of New York blasting past him.
Karen whirs to life.
‘Your exit is coming up, Peter,’ she announces, dotting a block or two away, which walking might’ve taken him about half an hour to reach. Peter swings there in less than thirty seconds. Despite the world forgetting Peter Parker, nobody has forgotten Spider-Man. In fact, its like his superhero identity was getting put on blast every corner he turned.
In any normal circumstance, he’d have waved back at the children and civilians recognising him in the street, but this wasn’t just any normal circumstance. Spider-Man was getting a purpose. Peter was getting a purpose again. Peter whips around the corner, spotting an open area of land close by. When he squints (barely has to, by the mere size of the thing), he spots the spaceship that had landed. White, decorated with blue stripes and an unmistakable four on the belly.
Peter hums to himself, crawling around an electrical distribution box and settling on top of it. It’s not like he’s hiding - the box is close to the spaceship, but Peter figures that walking up and knocking on their door might not be the best idea.
The door opens with a hiss, smoke leaving as an exhale as it flows down into stairs. Four people exit the spaceship. Calculated. Comfortable. They’ve done this before. Peter’s eyes flicker over them with focus. No spideysense going off.
He watches as they step out, still covered in their spacesuits. No identity yet . A tingle goes down Peter’s spine, rushes throughout his veins through his heart, as his head turns around, and a second later, he hears the spurring of a car. He huffs silently, trying to paste himself closer to the top of the box. Peter barely has to look longer than a second to know it’s a mix of the New Avengers and just the Avengers (because he did follow that copyright ordeal, not through his stalkerish behaviour but as Peter Parker from the Daily Bugle).
One of the crew members paces around the others, looking from the car to his squad, and he swears his gaze lands right on him before moving on again to take it in. He hears faint muffling - even the superhearing doesn’t exactly help with this one - and the crew member slows down a little. The person’s hand moves up to their helmet, but one hand spans out to not
roughly
but certainly firmly hold it in place.
Peter’s mouth nearly falls open in some type of shock or maybe disbelief. He shouldn’t be this
shocked
, he thinks. New York has been temporarily taken over by some Norse god, has definitely been destroyed by monsters more times than someone could count, but a person
stretching their limbs
is apparently what crosses the line for Peter. He hears a muffled exclamation of frustration through the helmet of the person who tried to pry it off just seconds before.
In the meantime, Bucky and Captain America had made their way over. Sam takes off the helmet, and Bucky has a facial expression that could only be described as scepticism.
The person who stretched their limbs retracts the arm, which is supposedly completely normal to these four, and turns his head toward Sam and Bucky.
“Your air. It has oxygen?” The stretchy guy asked, his voice a little scratchy. Peter grimaces at the question, turning his gaze toward Bucky and Sam, who kind of blink at them a few times, before Sam steps forward.
He nods. “Yes! Yes. A ton of it.” Peter furrows his brows together under the mask. He thinks Sam must be expecting some sort of alien species, but from the looks of it, these are most likely something humanoid. He doesn’t blame Sam, though; there’s somehow a lot more to the galaxy than anyone would’ve guessed.
The man looks at the previously hyperactive crew member, and nods, as another crew member puts a hand on their shoulder. As the stretchy man removes his helmet, so does the hyperactive member.
It reveals a boy, somewhere around his age - maybe a year older, his hair pushed back and ruffled a little by the helmet. Its blonde, nearly blindingly so, just like the huge grin on his face. His voice is clearer now, much clearer, booming through the area like he’s not afraid of anyone hearing it.
Bucky and Sam are left standing there, more specifically Sam, a little baffled at the fact that four humans have revealed to have been under the helmets. The boy turns around toward the other two crew members, urging them on to remove the helmets.
“Sue, the air is so crisp here, I swear it’s different,” He tells her, looking up to the sky. The woman, Sue , seems to reluctantly listen to the man as her hands slowly find their way to her helmet. Her helmet reveals similar blonde hair, trailing down to her shoulders, their faces similar but different in their own ways.
Family.
Peter’s eyebrows furrow impossibly closer as he instinctively crawls just a little closer to the edge of the box to get a clearer look.
Sue takes a deep inhale, exhaling through her mouth. A smile creeps up on her. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Johnny.” She admits with a small shrug. Peter’s head turns to the side a little. There’s something else in their expressions. He can only see three out of four but it’s different. A tinge of something.
The last crew member removes his helmet, revealing someone completely made out of stone. Okay . No, okay. Somehow, this is less absurd to him than a man who can stretch out his limbs. He smiles half-heartedly, not saying a lot. There’s obviously something he wants to say, but he isn’t.
The stretchy guy turns his gaze toward Bucky and Sam. He steps forward, extending a hand - normally, not in the stretchy way.
“Dr. Reed Richards. Fantastic Four,” He introduces himself, almost breathlessly. Sue looks at him with a gaze of concern, like he doesn’t usually speak like this. Her hand finds Reed’s nape like a second nature, as if his neck was molded for it (can he do that? Maybe he did mold it to fit-). He seems to relax a little, thinning his lips.
He turns to Sue. “This is Dr. Storm. My brother-in-law, Johnny. And Ben,” He shortly introduces the rest of the crew, before letting his gaze linger a little longer on Sue, having an unspoken conversation with her before she curtly nods, squeezing his neck gently.
Peter lays on the roof of the box, staring intently at the interaction as he hears Reed begin speaking of a warning they’re bringing - something about another doctor (does where-ever they’re from really need that many doctors?) but Peter feels the conversation fuzz around his ears, no longer listening with the focus he had a few seconds ago as a tingling sensation overcomes him. He sees Johnny’s head turn, tapping Ben’s rocky arm.
Peter isn’t sure if there was a conversation in these few seconds - it flows past him in a blur, before he sees Johnny’s arm raised, all six heads turnt with Johnny’s finger pointing right at Spider-Man.