Chapter Text
Peter had never given much thought to children, once upon a time. They were too far away to imagine, hazy outlines of someone else’s future. He had thought maybe he’d never want them at all, and the certainty had been easy, back then, when the world was abstract and the only body he had to live with was his own.
But then there was her.
She is pressed to him now, warm and small, breathing in that uneven rhythm of newborns, all squeaks and snuffles. Her mouth latches, tugs greedily, the steady pull both grounding and unsettling. His chest had been something to resent for so long — a thing to flatten, to bind, to tuck out of sight — and now it anchors him to her in ways he cannot express. His body keeps reminding him what it is, what it isn’t. Peter breathes through the sting of it, tries to remember that she needs him at all of six weeks old.
And then she sighs, tiny and content, a puff of air against his skin, and the ache softens like a crayon on July pavement. She is quickly milk-drunk, her lashes fluttering, her fist curling in loose surrender against the hollow of his collarbone. The city outside stirs in distant echoes: a car horn, a siren somewhere blocks away, but here the only sound is only the soft hush of her breath, her little hiccup, the way she fit into the cradle of his arm like she has always belonged there. Peter hadn’t known anything fit in his arms as well as this before her.
When she dribbles sleepily off her latch, he eases her up, pressing her small body against his shoulder, patting her back in steady circles. She is so impossibly light, but holding her always makes him feel weighted, anchored to the earth in a way nothing else does. She hiccups again, startling herself, then sags into him with a drowsy whimper.
The blinds leak pale light as the morning creeps in, spilling over the worn floorboards, the chipped paint of the radiator, the stack of laundry he hadn’t folded. Peter sways on his feet, slow and rhythmic, half-asleep himself, until a burp rattles out of her and she slumps fully against him, boneless with trust.
Everything in this exact moment is as it should be.
He kisses the crown of her head without thinking, the faint smell of milk and talc that he lets himself breathe in. Just one more minute like this, he tells himself. Just one more before the day began and the weight of everything else caught up. Right now there is no Midtown Tech. There are no Avengers, there is no Spider-Man, there is no Uncle Ben haunting him and no Aunt May.
Only her, sunk against his shoulder, drooling milk into the burping cloth.
The sun is climbing higher, and responsibility doesn’t wait. He lowers her carefully into the bassinet wedged against his bed, tucks the edges of her sleep suit around her, and lingers. There’s a whole world inside the little sleepy mornings, the winter sun muted gold on her pale brown hair.
She curls in her sleep, fists opening and closing as though she is still holding on to him. Peter’s chest tightened with something that was equal parts love and fear, because he is all she has and he is just him.
He straightens after a long ragged breath, rubbing at his eyes, and looks across the room. His school bag sat slouches against the chair, half-zipped, spilling papers and pens. His mask is tucked inside, crumpled between textbooks, smelling faintly of sweat and smoke. A reminder that his life had split into pieces: father, student, hero, all waiting for him to pick them back up the moment his neighbor knocks on the door to babysit again.
The apartment is quiet, save for her tiny breaths. The sky outside is pink and gold, bleeding into the blue of another ordinary day. Peter exhales slowly, pressing his hand to the doorframe of her corner, steadying himself. He will go. He always does.
The world needs Spider-Man. Cassandra Parker needs her father, and a safer world.
But for now, he lets himself watch her sleep just a moment longer.
The apartment has grown still again. Just her breath, the faint hum of the radiator, the whisper of dawn spilling pink and gold through thin curtains, morning traffic. Peter lets himself linger at the threshold of her sleep, memorises the way her tiny hands twitch, how her lips purse and relax in dreams.
Nobody ever told how loud babies are. He had spent the first weeks terrified at every little grunt, every little wheeze as she slept, as if each one was the end. He had held a spoon to her mouth, waiting for the tiny little puff of her breath to convince even his super senses she was alive.
It would be too easy to stay. To let the day pass and curl himself into the fragile safety of this room. But there is a bag by the chair, and a city waiting, and school bells that do not wait for sixteen-year-old boys.
The thought of leaving her always sits heavy. He rubs the heel of his hand against his eyes, sways once on tired feet, and reaches for the strap of his bag as the familiar knock sounds at the front door.
Mrs. Morales. Always the same: not a demand, not an intrusion, just presence. Just help.
Peter glances back at the bassinet. Cassie doesn’t stir and he breathes a sigh of relief.
Mrs. Morales had never asked for explanations. Not once. She had only seen him, pale and stammering in the hallway those first weeks, and said, “What do you need?” The simplest question in the world. The kindest.
And when he couldn’t answer, she had filled the silence with warmth anyway — casseroles left at his door, spare hands when his arms were full, an anchor when he thought he might drown.
Peter tightens the straps of his bag, lets the air settle in his lungs, and goes to open the door.
Mrs. Morales fills the doorway like she filled every room she stepped into— warmth spilling off her in the way she smiled, in the clink of her bracelets, in the grocery bag she always seems to have slung over one arm. This morning it was a paper sack, folded neat, the smell of fresh pan dulce drifting out as if she’d known he hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
“Morning, mijo,” she say, her voice low so it won’t carry past him into the apartment. “How’s my little princess?”
“Sleeping,” Peter answers, rubbing the back of his neck. “Finally.”
She clucks her tongue and pats his cheek like she’d been doing it all her life, shoulders past him, and straight to the bassinet as though the space was hers to command. His throat aches, something tight and awful burrowing in his chest, his cheek almost stinging at the loss.
Cassie stirs faintly at the scent of her perfume but thankfully does not wake, and Mrs. Morales bends over to whisper something in Spanish that Peter couldn’t quite catch, soft and reverent.
“You got her belly full, good boy,” she murmurs, smoothing the blanket, her rings glinting in the spill of sunrise. “Now it’s your turn. There’s food in the bag. You don’t argue with me about it.”
Peter laughs under his breath, shaky but grateful. There was no arguing with her, not when she looks at him with that fierce mother’s gaze that brooks no excuses. “I wouldn’t dare, Mrs Morales.”
She turned back to him, hands on her hips, eyebrows lifted. “School?”
He nods. His bag weighs heavy on his shoulder, and the words he didn’t say — patrol, danger, a whole second life she doesn’t know about — sat thick in his chest.
“Good,” she says firmly. “Go. Don’t worry. She’s mine until you get back. You’ll see — she’ll be spoiled rotten by the time you return.”
Peter’s throat tightens. He wants to say thank you, but the words never seem enough. Instead, he glances once more at the bassinet, at the tiny hand twitching against the blanket, then back at Mrs. Morales.
“Go,” she repeats, softer this time. “She’s safe. I promise.”
For a moment, just a moment, the weight on his shoulders lifts. And as he steps into the hallway with the strap of his bag cutting into his palm, the smell of fresh bread follows him, warm and grounding against the rising light of the city.
The door shuts behind him with a click, and for a few breaths Peter just stands there in the hallway, bag heavy on his shoulder, air thick with the scent of bread and baby powder.
It wasn’t hyperbole to say he would have gone crazy without Mrs. Morales. She stepped in where no one else did, no questions, no judgment, only warmth. Her hands steadying his when his own shook, her voice anchoring him in the blur of sleepless nights. She was the difference between drowning and keeping his head above water.
Sometimes he thought about what it would have looked like if she hadn’t lived two doors down. If she hadn’t noticed him pale and stammering that day in the stairwell, daughter bundled in a blanket too thin for February. If she hadn’t said, “What do you need?” and meant it.
Peter had just wanted to go home.
The thought slips in like a blade, and he cuts it off just as quickly, jaw tightening, breath sharp in his throat. Home was not May’s kitchen anymore, not her lectures, not her cold, conditional love.
Home was four cramped walls and a bassinet and Mrs. Morales knocking softly so his daughter wouldn’t wake, the smell of spices at Wednesday dinner night, and care and gentle, gentle eyes. Peter always feels like he will cry if she looks too long at him.
He hitches his bag higher and starts down the stairwell, mood already souring under the weight of it. The day was only beginning, and it felt too long already.
—————
Rio Morales had seriously considered calling child protective services.
A pregnant teenager, too slight for the weight he carries, moving into the building in a coat much too thick for late autumn. The fabric swallowed him whole, buttoned tight, like he thought he could disappear inside it. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He stammers when spoken to. He looks, above all else, alone.
But she doesn’t make the call.
Instead, she introduces herself. Her husband. Her son, nine years old and bright as a sparkler. She brings a casserole, still steaming, and presses it into his too-thin hands. She watches his throat bob as he swallows hard, not from hunger but from the effort of holding back. His face is all bones and shadows. She recognizes it instantly because it’s the kind of hunger you don’t admit to.
She doesn’t ask questions. She learns quickly that he won’t answer anyway.
She knows he probably doesn’t have insurance. She knows he won’t go near a hospital. She sees the way his hands tremble against the grocery bags, how his eyes skitter to the exits. He’s braced for judgment, for someone to take what little he has left.
So Rio waits. She lets him set the pace, and when the time comes, when the cold November morning finds her pounding on his door to the sound of his bitten-off cries, she goes in without hesitation.
She delivers the boy’s baby in his own shoebox unit, its walls closing in and the radiator clanking, the air hot with panic and fear. She kneels beside him and steadies his shaking hands. She wipes the sweat from his brow and the tears from his cheeks. She tells him when to breathe, when to push, when to rest, her voice firm and steady above the storm of his pain.
He looks at her like she is the only solid thing in the world, and she thinks, maybe she is.
When it is done, when the tiny, furious cry cuts through the air, she places the child in his arms. His face crumples, but he doesn’t break. He holds on like he’s been waiting his whole life for this one thing.
Rio Morales is a nurse.
Rio Morales takes what good she can do in the world, and she does it every day.
She doesn’t ask where the boy came from, or who failed him, or why his aunt only shows up when paperwork forces her to. She just keeps showing up. She brings food, clean blankets, steady hands when his own aren’t enough. She teaches him how to swaddle, how to bathe a baby without panic, and how to trust himself as much as she does.
She doesn’t call child services. She doesn’t tell anyone what she sees.
She only says, What do you need?
And when he can’t answer, she fills the silence anyway.
A soft rustle pulls her from the memory.
Cassie stirs in the bassinet, lips puckering, fists twitching in restless protest. The beginnings of a wail tremble in her chest, and Rio crosses the room before it can break free.
“Ah, mi princesa,” she murmurs, scooping the baby up with practiced ease. Warmth blooms against her chest as the tiny body curls instinctively into her shoulder, and she sways without thinking, a nurse’s rhythm, a mother’s rhythm, hips rocking, hand smoothing down the fine wisps of pale brown hair. Rio always scans for blonde hair in the boys Peter knows, that she can see.
“Shhh, shhh, mi vida. It’s okay, ya pasó,” she croons, voice soft as a lullaby and Cassie hiccups, soft and startled, then lets out a weak, indignant squeak. Rio hushes her, pressing a kiss against her temple, breathing in the familiar smell of baby. “There, there, preciosa. Papí’s at school, but you’ve got me. You’re safe.”
The baby’s cries melt into whimpers, her face tucked against the crook of Rio’s neck as Rio strokes her back in steady circles.
“Eso, my girl,” she whispers, smiling into the downy crown of her head. “Siempre conmigo. Always.”
This is the easy part. The good part. The part she will always choose, every single time.
—————
Peter stares up at Midtown High School, rubs his tired eyes and fails the war against a yawn as he climbs the stairs.