Chapter Text
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
It wasn’t the right thing to say, Ben knew that much. But what else could he say? “I know I haven’t paid you in months, and you’ve spent the last decade putting up with me, but pretty please don’t leave”?
But he was tired, and sore from his fight with Flint, and still convinced at any second one of the frighteningly many people he could’ve possibly pissed off in the past 24 hours would pop out from somewhere and blow his innards all over the walls. So instead, he just stands there, watching yet another person he cares for walk out because of his own damned actions.
Janet stormed through the office with a cardboard box held so tightly her knuckles went white, fishing through drawers to throw her belongings inside.
“No, Ben,” She argued, making her way to the table by the window. “This is what reacting looks like. It’s the physical response to a stimulus. You just haven’t felt it in half a decade.”
His heart sank as she grabbed the lamp. It was an ugly old thing, with flowers painted along its top. They’d been vibrant at one point, Ben remembered, but the layer of dust blanketing it gave it a faded look. He couldn’t even remember the last time they’d even used it, hoping to save a few pennies on an electric bill already on the verge of bankrupting them.
“That’s actually my lamp,” He choked out. “My-my… My aunt gave that to me.”
Janet ignored him, which, given the circumstances, he felt was fair. Nonetheless, he watched tensely as she placed it in her cardboard box, cringing when it knocked against the other various contents.
He’s not sure how long he kept an eye on that box for, only half focusing on his talk with Cat as he tried to sneak a peak through the tinted window of his office. It wasn’t until Janet had begrudgingly began unpacking her things once more that he calmed down, letting out a sigh as she placed the lamp back on its table.
Peter Parker was well aware of how ugly the world could be, how bad things happened every day to good people while the scum of the earth lived their lives scott free.
He had been 8 when his parents died, just old enough to understand what death meant but still unable to fully grasp the fact that he’d never get to doze off in his dad’s workshop as he fiddled with something, that he’d never hug his mother again and feel her ruffle his hair with a chuckle.
May and Ben had stepped up immediately, and a few measly hours after learning his parents were gone, Peter found himself standing at the door of his Aunt and Uncle’s home clutching what little he owned to his chest in a weathered knapsack
The couple had ushered him inside, and May sat with him while Ben talked with the officer that’d driven him. He couldn’t hear their hushed conversation, or May’s own quiet consolations for that matter. He felt… floaty. As if his body was there, sitting on the patchwork sofa as his aunt cradled him in her arms, but his mind was somewhere else, almost detached from reality.
When the officer finally left, his aunt and uncle brought him to his new room. He had to force back the tears brimming in his eyes as the finality of his situation finally caught up with him, accompanied by the sense of wrongness of this new, strange place being called his. It was a nice room, a bit smaller than his room before. The bed sat nestled in the corner next to a window looking out onto the streets below, with a desk and closet across from it. To its right sat a small nightstand housing the only decor in the otherwise bare room; a small lamp that had a ring of flowers painted around the top.