Archive of Our Own

Peter is on a bench in the park.

The leaves are turning golden and the air is crisp. There’s a hum here, in the ground, in the bench, in his bones. He’s alone and he’s not. There’s someone sitting on the bench right beside him, but he can’t look. There’s only the knowledge that someone is near.

He can hear laughter and the rustle of leaves. Shapes move in the park, like dancing shuttered film. Couples walking, dogs running. Mothers with their children, children with their sisters.

Sarah’s hoodie is soft and warm against Peter’s neck. It smells a little like that awful detergent their last foster home used but also like Sarah, like sunbeams and cheap lipgloss and fingers combing his hair and —

Peter is on a bed.

That fact is all he can manage at first. He orbits around it for a while. A bed. He has mass which is being acting upon by the gravitational force of the Earth against a horizontal bed. He’s in a bed and it hurts. There’s a needle in his arms and one of those plastic clip things on his finger, and now that he’s aware of it, it really, really hurts. Right in his chest, deep, deep inside of him.

He’s gasping, too. Peter only realizes that from the sharp ache of his paper lungs and the squeeze of whatever plastic thing they have stuck to his face. His skin is sticky and hot, the sheets encasing him are scratchy, and now there’s a heavy hand on his shoulder.

A voice, gruff and deep and breaking out of the static, says, “Whoa, whoa kid. Calm down, you’re good. You’re good.”

Peter’s eyelids flutter. They don’t seem to want to open and the light that shutters in — white and fluorescent — is blinding.

“Where ’m I?” Peter asks, or tries to. The words stick in his throat, slurring over his deadweight tongue.

“Hospital. You’re in the hospital, kid, but you’re good. You’re going to be OK.”

Frank. That was Frank Castle. The Punisher. Who, as Peter’s brain starts to kick into gear, has to be who shot him. Because Peter had been shot. He remembers the rip of the bullet through him, the punch of pain, the instant, deadweight feeling of his heart failing, his sternum shattering, then the slow, smothering feeling of bleeding out. And now he’s in a hospital. And though his heart is beating again and his chest is wrapped in thick layer of bandages, there’s still a throbbing, pulsing pain in his chest that sets his teeth on edge.

But if Frank is here now, then Peter is safe. Frank wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. Well, besides shooting him to begin with, but Peter doesn’t have the bandwidth to think about that right now. Relief floods him at the sound of Franks voice and he goes limp, his head falling like a bowling ball against the pile of thin hospital pillows. Taking a breath feels like lifting a brick wall with his chest.

Other memories begin forming. MJ in Frank’s boat house. MJ holding the crumpled letter Peter had addressed to her five years ago. Ned in the sunlight of his and MJ’s apartment, pulling out his X-Wing fighter Lego set for Peter and looking Peter straight in the eye. Metzger in that chair, the levitating shards of glass digging into his skin glinting with white sunlight. Dr. Banner, grey and shaken, being packed into that ambulance, asking desperate questions with no response. The crunch of the police car as Peter had whipped Scorpion into it. The Hand in red descending down upon Peter in slow motion as he could feel the hot bubbling of his spider mutation coursing through his flesh after ripping off the inhibitor. The awful feeling that he was changing, the desperate jealousy he had felt at Ned and MJ’s party, the dead chill in his heart when MJ hadn’t remembered him there on that roof, and May. May sitting on the bed with him. May in the sunlight, alive. May smiling at him, her hand on his.

“You’re not alone,” she had said. Her brown eyes sparkled in the golden afternoon sun and her smile was everything, everything and she had looked at him and Jean and —

Jean.

Peter’s eyes fly open and he yanks upright. Or again, he tries to. He only gets halfway before his body screams at him and he flops back. The world spins, the light stings his eyes, and Frank is speaking but Peter is too focused on raising his wavering hand to knock the stupid plastic thing off of his face. Finally someone, probably Frank, has mercy on him and lifts the plastic thing off. It it digs into Peter’s eye on the way but Peter can breathe real air without it and that steadies him a little.

“You gotta calm down,” Frank is saying. His voice keeps coming in and out like something. Like, a radio. Peter thinks. Peter cracks open an eye again. Frank is a dark smear in his fuzzy vision. Frank’s hand is still on Peter’s shoulder and damn, his grip is strong.

“What happened?” Peter pushes the words out between breaths. “Is — is —“

“You saved the day, is what happened. It’s all good now. Nobody else got hurt.” Frank starts coming into focus as Peter blinks tears away. And he looks like shit. The shadows under his eyes are dark as bruises, his face is lined and his hair is oily and stuck up, as though he’s been running his hands through it. His body armor and black shirt look crusty and gross.

“Frank. Jean.” It’s all Peter can manage. “Jean. Is she —“

“She’s fine too, thanks to you.” For a moment, Frank looks at something on the other side of the room, but then he’s turning back to Peter, his face softer. “She’s been keeping you alive with that weird magic voodoo shit of hers.”

That’s not all Peter needs to know, but for the moment, it’s enough. She’s alive. She’s fine. He saved her. His body is screaming at him and his head is spinning like a top so he lets Frank push him back against the pillow. He breathes. For a while that’s all he can do.

There’s a buzz somewhere deep inside his head. Right there, at the edge of his awareness.

“- can never apologize enough,” Frank is saying, his words filtering through the rush of the blood in Peter’s head. Peter blinks, refocusing on him.

“I’m so sorry,” Frank says. His black eyes are somber and his face is somehow more grim than Peter’s seen it, as though age has scraped across him like a stone. “I did this to you, and I —“ He seems to choke on his words, eyes darting back and forth as his mouth works before shaking his head hard. “I’m so sorry, kid. This should not have happened.”

Peter raises his head. Squints. Frank really does look like shit. He looks as though he’s carrying the whole world on his shoulders, even more than usual, and there, in the hard lines by his eyes, glinting under the fluorescent lights — “Are you crying?”

Frank huffs and immediately scrubs at his face.

“You are. You’re crying.”

“Shut up,” Frank snaps and suddenly, the tear Peter swore he saw is gone, as if Frank had vacuumed it back up into his tear duct. “Shut up. I’m not.”

“You are. Wow.” Peter smiles wide. If he hadn’t been sure that his torn-apart heart was beating, he’s sure now because something like hysterical joy is pulsing through him. It hurts and there’s a million problems to deal with, but they’re all alive. Everyone. That’s all Peter could ask for, but as a cherry on top, here is Frank Castle crying over him. The bruises on Peter’s face aches and he can feel cuts on his temple pulling apart, but he can’t stop smiling. “You are, you crying over me.”

“You better shut the fuck up, kid.” But Frank’s smiling too, a genuine smile which is so weird and wondrous on him that Peter half wonders if he’s dreaming again.

The world starts to slide again, Peter drifting in a calm, warm haze of relief. Everyone’s alive. Jean is alive.

“ — cut you suit, but they didn’t have a choice. It was bad, kid,” Frank is saying, back to somber again. Peter should probably feel bad that he’s been tuning Frank in and out like a radio, but he kind of can’t help it. “They had to do surgery to stitch you back together and you lost a fuckton of blood. They don’t know how you survived. And they didn’t know how much meds to pump you with, whether they’d work on your system or not.”

Hmm. Meds. Now that Frank mentions it, there is a heaviness on the edge of Peter’s awareness. It’s nothing to the pulse of pain in his chest though. “What ‘m I on now?”

“They said they gave you as much as they could give you, but I don’t know. They were scared to go too hard in case they’d fuck you up.”

“Well. Whatever they have me on. Issnot working,” Peter mutters. The pain is hard to think around. It’s like a massive drum in his brain, demanding his attention. But he has to think. It’s not over, it’s never over.

His eyes slip shut. He can think better without the light slicing through his eyeballs.

The most obvious thing is that Peter can’t stay here. There’s too much to do, too much still unraveled. Jean. Jean, that’s his first problem. Jean, where is she —

But Peter answers his own question. He already knows. They only connected for what had to have been less than a minute, but there, in that sunlit memory, it had felt like hours. They had barely spoken, but it’s as though he’s known her for years. He knows what she’d do. She’d leave. She’d disappear. Jean had grasped onto him like a lifeline in the memory because she’s had nothing for so long but she’d know that she’d never be left alone after this, Metzger or not, and she’d leave to keep him safe. And because leaving is what she does.

Which wasn’t fair. MJ’s furious face in Frank’s boat cuts across his mind and he gets the irony, he really does, but it’s true. It’s not fair. Peter had told Jean that she wasn’t alone because she had him. She had him which meant that he had her and yeah, maybe it was just some weird telepathic BS or whatever but —

In the memory that he and Jean had shared, the sun had been warm against his skin. It had smelled like his old room at May’s. Like laundry, old paint, Bath and Bodywork candles, a metallic tinge of soldering. He had looked at Jean in that afternoon sun and he had known her. He knew the contours of her soul and the shape of her thoughts and the deep, deep, gaping hole inside of her. He had shown her the void inside of him and they had known each other down to their bones. It had meant something and of course she’d leave, it made the most sense for both of them. But it still broke Peter’s stupid soft heart which does nothing ever but break over and over.

“Where is Jean?” Peter asks, his eyes still closed.

He already knows the answer. She’s on a park bench in autumn. She’s on a bus watching beams of sunlight slip through the trees. She’s slipping through his fingers like May, like Ned and MJ, like Mr. Stark, like Ben. He’ll never find her again. She’s gone.

But Frank huffs again. Which is not the response Peter expected.

Peter forces his eyes open. Frank catches his gaze then cocks his head to the other side of the room.

Peter looks.

If Frank’s side of the room had been a bleak wash of off-white walls, cheap hospital furniture and a dirty, sad man, the other side of the room is an explosion of colors. There are red and blue balloons with his Spider-man face drawn on with sharpie, stacks of Get Well cards, a menagerie of children’s crayon drawings and framed professional photos of Spiderman and coupons from delis and bodegas written up just for him, handwritten messages and wads of cash in rubber bands, a wall of flowers, and MJ’s pen drawing of him and Ned with their Legos right there at the front with a Spiderman Mask roughly scribbled on top of his face. And tucked to the side of all of it, on the cheap plastic chair in the far corner, is a girl with dirty red bangs and wide green eyes. She’s staring at him.

Peter’s mouth drops open. The buzz he had been feeling is pointed suddenly. It’s her. This whole time. Still here.

“Jean,” he croaks.

Jean is up and out of her chair in an instant, nearly tripping over herself before gripping the rails of his bed with white knuckles. She looks awful. Peter waves a hand up to keep her from pitching forward. She had looked bad before when he had first met her, too thin and wrung out, but the rage that had animated her is gone. Jean looks hollow. Just like Frank there are purple bruises under her eyes, shadows and lines across her face. She looks smeared away somehow, like she had been painted onto the world instead of existing in it.

Jean catches his hand and holds it. Her hand is cold and clammy but it’s three-dimensional and real and instantly calms something inside of him. The buzz in his head echoes down his arm. It’s distant, distant, but there. Like a bumblebee, he thinks again, a little hysterically.

“You’re still here,” Peter says, the wonder thick in his voice.

She’s blinking hard, looking one second from either bursting into tears or running out the door.

“I thought you’d be gone.”

“I should’ve left,” Jean whispers. Her voice sounds awful too. “I know I should’ve left, I was going to but —”

“No,” Peter interrupts her. Now that he knows what to listen for, that buzz her of her mind, playing on the fringes of his spider sense, almost feels like a song, like a piano being played somewhere else in a building through an old gramophone. “No, stay here. I want you to stay here, you — You look awful.”

The corner of her mouth twitches up.

“I’ve been trying to get her to eat something other than peanuts from the vending machine,” Frank grinds out. “She wouldn’t leave your side. She kept you alive the whole way here and all through the surgery.”

Peter looks between the two of them. “Kept me —?”

“Kept your blood pumping when your heart was out of commission and your brain wired up and shit,” Frank says, looking stricken again. Peter can see the apology building again and as funny as it was to see Frank cry over him once, once was enough.

“How long?” Peter asks quickly, interrupting the oncoming guilt trip. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days,” Jean says. Her face has smoothed over but she hasn’t moved from the side of his bed and her grip on his hand is tight. She’s lost and scared and not sure what to do and she always retreats like this, when her heart’s too exposed. Peter doesn’t know exactly how he knows this about her, but he does. He squeezes her hand back.

“Three days. OK. OK, that’s not too bad,” he mutters under his breath. He starts to kick at his sheets. “Where’s my mask?”

“Hey, it’s alright,” Frank says, frowning. “Don’t worry about the doctors kid, I took care of them —“

Peter freezes. “You took care of them?” He squeaks.

“I mean they all know better than to go blabbing about anything they saw. And we kept the mask on for most of it so most of them really didn’t see anything.” He lets out a huff of breath and then smirks. “You know you look just like how I thought you’d look.”

“Oh yeah?" Peter pauses. "And how’s that?”

“Like a good kid,” Frank says with that weird little smile again.

Peter laughs. He can’t help it. He always knew under the murderous tendencies, writhing PTSD, and general caustic rage, Frank Castle was a softie. He can’t wait to tell Daredevil and DeWolff all of this —

“OK, OK. That’s good. Is my mask here, though? I need it to leave.”

“What?” Frank asks gruffly at the same time Jean says, “No, Peter —”

“I can’t stay here.” Peter tries to say it calmly, but there’s a sharp panic building inside of him. He’s never liked hospitals, not since Ben — “The sooner I’m gone, the better, even if you scared some nurses off, the security can’t be great here and I’ve got to make some calls about Metzger and —”

“Kid, less than seventy-two hours ago every news station in the country was blasting that you were on death’s door. Even with your spider shit, you’d be dead if it wasn’t for Miss Telepath here. I shredded you up bad. You were in surgery for six hours.”

“But I’m good now.” Peter has been shifting in the bed this whole time and has made it almost to sitting up straight. And sure, his head is rocking like a ship out at sea and he can feel the grind of bones against his shattered sternum and his heart is beating kinda weird, but he’s pretty sure he can walk. He’s walked while feeling worse.

“Kid, please, the doctors here will help you —“

“You already said it, they can’t do anything more for me. They stitched me all up, right? My healing factor will do the rest and the meds they have here don’t work on me.” Wouldn’t the arachnid mutation inside of him help increase his healing factor? If he was still feeling this shitty after three days, Frank must’ve really done a number on him. That shot would’ve torn through Jean like paper and for a moment, there’s an oily waver of rage at Frank. But then it’s gone like smoke. One day Peter will have time to think about it. Maybe.

“You still need to rest,” Jean says. She looks nervous, her hand tight in Peter’s.

“I really think you should stay here, kid.“

“Please.” Peter doesn’t mean for his voice to break, but by the way both Frank and Jean freeze, it’s at least getting his point across. Peter pushes through. “I really don’t want to be here. Really. I’ll heal the same at home. Where no one might see me. I really don’t want to be here.”

“Just a few more days —“

“Frank,” Peter cuts through. “I’m asking you. Please.”

Peter doesn’t say, You owe me, but it echoes between them. If Frank thought that Peter was never going to drop Staten Island …

“Fuck,” Frank spits out, dropping his head and scrubbing roughly through his hair. “Fuck, fuck.”

Then Frank raises his face sharply towards Jean and they stare at each other. The far off bumblebee buzz deep in Peter’s spider sense gets slightly louder and Frank’s mouth twitches. They must be talking to each other. Which means Jean Grey and Frank Castle had pivoted hard enough from mortal enemies to conferring telepathically about Peter’s outpatient processing.

Figures.

“Fine,” Frank grinds out finally. “I do have a bit of a plan to get you out of here. I’ll stay behind to clear it out for you.”

“And I’ll go with you,” Jean says, her voice still only a little louder than a whisper. “No going off on your own.”

“Yeah, no running off to do any stupid shit, especially stupid superhero shit,” Frank says, nailing Peter with a sharp look. Peter nods along. “And if anything weird starts happening with that gaping hole in you, if I say you’re coming back, then you’re coming back. Immediately. You understand?”

Peter is never coming back. He raises a hand and says, “Scout’s honor.”

It takes a while to maneuver Peter out of bed. Jean disappears and reappears with some spare clothes for him, that he’s fairly sure she lifted from someone’s room, but hey, who is he to judge. They fit, at least. Frank shoves most of the Spiderman cards, letters, and coupons into a trash bag before shoving the trashbag into his greasy duffel bag.

Jean disappears again as Frank helps Peter dress, which is one of the most humiliating things Peter has ever done. His limbs shake. He has to sit and pant after standing for Frank to tug his sweatpants up and his vision whites out a little when he lifts his hands to slide the t-shirt on. Throughout the whole thing, Frank is weirdly patient, his rough hands gentle as they guide Peter’s limbs into the clothes.The stretches where Peter has to sit and breathe are echoingly silent. Peter almost wishes Frank would curse at him some.

Peter knew he’d be weak, but this is ridiculous. It’s unnerving to feel his body refusing to do what he wants. For there to be a brick wall limit on how much he can do. He hasn’t felt like this ever. Or, not since that split second before he blipped.

“It’s not a race, kid,” Frank mutters after Peter tries to raise an arm to slip into the hoodie and misses by a mile.

“I don’t know why it’s this bad. My healing factor —“

“Has been busy on more important shit. Like your fucking heart. And it’s only been three days. Plus they’ve only got the normal IVs here, none of that expensive shit for weirdos with metabolisms like you. You’re probably half starved.”

Peter shakes his head and tries again, gritting his teeth when Frank catches his wrist and guides it into the sleeve.

After Peter is dressed, he sits on the bed, sweat chilling against his hairline while Frank pretends to be busy with his bag to give him space. But Frank is frowning. Then Jean slips back into the room and starts frowning too. Then they start frowning at each other while the bee buzzes louder in Peter’s mind and he knows they’re deciding whether they should force him to stay and he can’t stay.

So in one move, Peter shoves himself to his feet. His legs are made of wadded up gum and his chest muscles feel as though they’re shredding in real time, but he stays upright, only stumbling once. He’s Spider-man, after all.

“You said you had a plan?” He asks loudly, pulling on his best that-was-nothing face.

Frank gives Jean an unimpressed look.

Turns out Frank’s plan is not, for once, a massive problem in the making.

Peter and Jean make their way slowly out of the hospital. Jean had found him one crutch and is clutching papers and some daisies she had grabbed from the still massive pile of Spiderman gifts they were leaving behind. But Jean looks as though she hasn’t showered in a week and Peter’s sure he’s not looking much better. A few patients and visitors shoot them looks as they pass but none of the nurses or hospital staff glance once in their direction.

“Are you doing this?” Peter asks as he leans against the back of the elevator. A squad of nurses had exited and walked right past them, splitting around Peter and Jean and keeping up their conversation as though they don’t exist.

Jean thumbs the button for the ground floor and doesn’t look at Peter. “The less they see, the better.”

“You’ve gotten stronger.”

In the small, grimy elevator mirror above the floor buttons, he sees her tighten her lips. She still doesn’t look back at him. “I thought it would fade at first. But it hasn’t. It’s like using a limb I didn’t know was there. It’s —“

Jean cuts herself off, closing her mouth tight, eyebrows furrowing.

“Hey,” Peter says.

She stays frozen for a second before turning towards him.

“I’m really glad you’re still here,” Peter says, his voice catching in his throat. He smiles weakly. “You scared me for a second. When I woke up.”

Her face melts immediately, eyebrows pointing up and eyes widening. She’s so young. According to the old foster records Peter had found she would have just turned eighteen.

Which, he realizes distantly as the elevator shudders to a stop and the doors ding, is the same age that he was when May died and when Strange’s spell wiped Peter Parker away. And the memory hits him of, after he had walked away without telling MJ who he was in that coffee shop, how he had sat on a park bench for hours and hours, the night numbing his body and the foggy morning wet against his face. Those first weeks are a haze now of hunger, aching joints, dark empty lofts, and raw, raw grief.

It had gotten better. But never good. The last five years are a wash of exhaustion, bone-gnawing jealously, periods of numb depression and manic overworking, feeling like he was more machine than person, like he was going insane, like he was a pat of butter scraped over too much bread. It feels as though Peter is feeling the sunlight for the first time in years.

If he can keep Jean from that —

Jean grabs his arm to help him out of the elevator and he squeezes her shoulders hard. Her eyes are wet and Peter realizes she must know what he’s thinking, or hear an echo of it at least. The buzzing melody in his head, the link between her mind and his, pulses warmer.

Frank’s plan becomes quickly apparent when they step out from the metal double doors of the hospital and into the thin, white afternoon sun, amid a crowd of New Yorkers all holding Spider-man signs or wearing Spider-man masks.

They instant Peter and Jean step out of the door, the crowd starts cheering and screaming and Peter feels a pulse of panic, remembering the protest crowds when his identity had been leaked years ago. But they’re all looking up. In a window halfway up a building, a masked-up Frank is standing in the window, waving like an idiot. The crowd goes nuts. There are little kids in Spider-man hoodies, grown adults with Spiderman face paint, hand-made signs that say GET BETTER SPIDERMAN, WE LOVE YOU SPIDER-MAN, PRAYERS FOR SPIDERMAN <3, YOU SAVED MY LIFE.

Peter nearly stumbles to his knees. The crowd keeps going and going, only a few glancing at Peter and Jean as they limp through the crowd.

It’s like a dream. The crowd is exuberant, singing and laughing. A kid on someone’s shoulders shots a pretend web at Peter and Peter laughs. He can sense Jean’s discomfort in the crowd but she lets him linger in it. Even after Frank disappears from the window, they keep up the chanting and the whooping. He can hear May’s voice in his head telling him, You forget so easily.

Eventually he lets Jean lead him away. They grab a taxi loitering in front of the hospital where Jean has to help him lower into the seat. As the taxi cab peels away, he watches the crowd disappear, feeling swept away by the world, his awareness drifting so that he barely hears Jean rattle off what must be his address to the driver.

The city pours by them. The buildings, the people, the trash, grime, birds, graffiti, glittering glass, and glimpses of an azure blue sky. Tops of trees, shimmering in the breeze, and high above, wispy clouds stretched thin. Peter’s eyelids are heavy. He feels the sunlight through the car windows like beams of warmth. Jean is beside him, her hoodie drawn up, her mind pulsing like a lighthouse in his.

The warm drifting shatters when they get to their destination and Peter stumbles out of the taxi and onto the wharf. The waters of the harbor are dark and choppy, the air has a slicing cold and the reek of rotting wood and rusting metal.

“What —“ He starts before the taxi driver shoots away. Jean shoves a wad of cash back into her pocket as she steps up beside him, grabbing his arm and wrapping it over her shoulder. “This isn’t my place.”

“Oh it’s not?” Jean says with a flat voice, staring ahead as she starts to drag Peter with her toward the docks.

“Hey, I thought we were going home.”

“You wanted out of the hospital? This is as out of the hospital as you’re going to get. We decided it’d be better to bring you here.”

“Traitor,” Peter mumbles but he lets her start marching him all the way down to the ramshackle dock where Frank’s place is tucked.

This is ridiculous. If Peter could swing himself away to his own asbestos-ridden, water-stained apartment where his own decades old, secondhand couch awaited, he would. But he doesn’t trust himself right now with his new webs and stitched up heart. And he could feel his strength coming to an end, a shaky depletion in his limbs.

A few groups of dock workers shoot them looks as Jean half-carries a hobbling Peter through the maze of narrow, slimy alleys between warehouses and abandoned shipping crates. When they get to Frank’s, the pain drumming through Peter’s body has ratcheted louder and Peter’s thoughts have near flat-lined into an incessant buzz but Jean leads them to the right door, around the right corner, flipping the secret switches and safeguards as they go. By the time they get to the hanging boat, Peter’s not sure he can make it up the rickety staircase, it’s wooden boards swollen and warped. Has he ever walked up to Franks door? Why would he if he could swing up?

“C’mon,” Jean says. Her grip on his arms is tight as iron and grounds him back to Earth. “We’re almost there.” And then, after a glance at his face, she frowns and says softly, “I’ve got you.”

Peter nods. Sweat is chilly against his brow. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat. They take the steps one at a time.

Jean drags open the heavy door to the boat and Peter hobbles inside, stepping carefully down the short staircase into the kitchen. He doesn’t think he’s ever been happier to see Frank’s utilitarian but homey place and as Jean shuts the door behind them with a slam, Peter begins to hobble forward, the only thought on his mind to get horizontal on a comfortable surface as soon as possible.

That’s when the thick curtain partitioning off the underbelly area of the ship is thrown open and several things happen at once.

MJ and Ned are suddenly there, emerging out from behind the curtain, their mouths gaping in surprise.

Then the world shudders and freezes in whirling prismastic crystals and the pulsing psyionic force of Jean’s power, locking MJ and Ned into mannequin positions while the world throbs and shifts.

Peter immediately throws his arm up, barking at Jean, “Stop, stop!”

Jean’s wide eyes shoot towards him but the telepathic warping stops as fast as it began. Ned had been mid-step and he falls over while MJ catches herself on one of the booth tables, grabs a mug off of Frank’s table and hurls it like a baseball pitch right at Jean’s head.

Peter’s world slows down and shrinks to wordless momentum, action, angles. His body knows that the mug is too far away to grab, and the angle is wrong, even if he could catch it with a web he wouldn’t be able to pull it away in time before it hit Jean. Instead, his arm yanks up his crutch with force, the end of it catches the mug inches in front of Jean’s face, launching the mug straight up to shatter against the ceiling in a rain of jagged ceramic shards.

Only Peter’s stupid body didn’t take into account how many of his lacerated chest muscles were involved in jerking the crutch up that hard, nor did it think about how much of Peter’s weight had been resting against that crutch. So in a single burst of pain, Peter’s vision tunnels to a pinhole, a shout breaks out of his throat, and the floor of the boat flies up to slam into his shoulder.

“Peter!” Jean cries out, dropping to grab onto him. He can feel her panic shuddering in the thin webs between their minds. His lungs struggle to expand, his limbs locked.

“Maynerd?” Ned gasps from his hands and knees, staring at Peter with his glasses knocked askew.

“Get away from him!” MJ grabs another mug and yanks it up and over her head, aimed at Jean.

“No!” Peter gasps, his voice strangled. The pain is falling away, inch by inch. He sucks in a sharp breath and pushes himself up, Jean helping him, until his back hits the counters in Frank’s small kitchen. MJ is frozen, her brows furrowed, looking between him and Jean. “It’s OK,” he breathes out. “She’s with me. It’s over.”

MJ mouth and eyebrows work up and down but she still has the mug locked and loaded behind her head like a ballistic missile. Ned scrambles to his feet beside her.

“Prove it,” MJ snaps. “She’s the telepath, right? How do I know she’s not controlling you?”

“I’m not,” Jean growls. Peter can feel her tension, her panic, the way her fight or flight is pounding in her mind so he reaches up and grips her arm.

Their connection snaps stronger and her panic is met with his desperate sense to make everything fine and their minds spin together, separate but linked, as though free-falling hand-in-hand through the atmosphere.

“She’s not controlling me,” Peter echoes. He should be thinking of a better explanation but it’s hard to think around the drumming pain and the weird skip of his heart, and he can’t stop staring at MJ and at Ned, drinking in every detail. It’s really them. They’re really here.

MJ scoffs hard. “And I’m just supposed to believe that?”

“It’s me, it’s really me. Well, I mean, I guess you wouldn’t know it is me.” It’s still hard to breathe and there’s a warmth blooming across Peter’s chest where the stitches should be, but the pain is slowly falling back to normal levels. “But it is me.”

“Is she wearing that inhibitor?”

“No. And I’m not either. Look, they were experimenting on her. Damage Control. She was trying to get in because they — They killed her sister.”

Both Ned and MJ’s eyes shoot towards Jean, whose face has calcified to stone again.

“And they were going to kill her too. But then I saved her and she saved me and — It’s really complicated but she’s with me now.” Peter shifts so he’s sitting a little higher. He realizes his one of his hands has risen to unconsciously press against his chest. “Why would she be pretending that it’s OK when she had the power to do just do what she wants? Why would she be here in the first place? You know that her whole goal as to get into Damage Control and that’s — That’s over.”

“But you’re like, in sync now. Kind of. Somehow.” MJ says, repositioning the mug in her hand.

Peter blinks. “What?”

“When you move, she moves.”

“Oh. Uh —” Peter looks up at Jean who’s crouched beside him. "I don't know."

Jean looks back and her lip wobbles a bit. Then she swallows.

“I don’t know either,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “It’s like a wall came down. In my head. Ever since I was in your mind and we talked it’s like…”

Peter swallows too. “Yeah,” he says. He knows what she’s trying to say. Since he woke up, that buzz of her in the back of his head is like the vibration of a knotted piano string, tying the two of them together and he can feel her presence with a sense other than his spider sense. Like she’s a beacon of warmth in his occipital lobe. “It’s like we — connected somehow. In that moment. Like, a link.“

“Mind melded,” Ned interrupts, his eyes wide. “Like in Star Trek. The Vulcan mind meld. You shared a mental link during a period of intense emotions and now your minds are still connected.”

Peter blinks because that’s exactly what it feels like. Peter senses a brief blip of confusion from Jean wondering if Vulcan was the black armored guy with the lightsaber while MJ’s mug missile falters and she frowns as she takes this into serious consideration. And he can’t help it. He laughs.

“I don’t know what happened,” Jean says in a rush over his laughter and Peter doesn’t need the buzz to know that she’s panicking and is saying this more to him than MJ and Ned. “I don’t know how it happened, I swear, and I don’t know how to make it stop, I’m really not trying to —“

“No, no, it’s OK,” Peter says, sobering up fast, because it is OK. And now that Ned has identified it, Peter imagines himself pushing his thoughts the way he used to try to when he and Ned were playing Star Trek in elementary school and he’d play Spock. He bundles up all of the feelings and warmth of It’s OK and sends it bouncing down the piano string tying the backs of his and Jean’s minds together, like rolling a ball down an alley. He feels her pick it up. Sees her face unknot, her sea glass eyes shining.

“I —“ She starts. Then swallows and tries again. Whispering. “I can try to get rid of it, if you want.”

“No,” Peter says fast and he doesn’t have to consciously send the panic that suggestion rattles up because it echoes between them like that shattered mug.

No, he’s been so alone, so alone, for so long, and having her like this is like having someone warm and close sitting beside him on the subway, like feeling the sun on his skin for the first time after years and years of damp winter. And maybe it should be weird, to be this close so fast, but the link is too blunt, too bare to be anything other than honest. Peter’s bleeding, not just from the barely knit together bullet wound in his chest, but from all that he’s lost. The grief is old but unhealed, bleeding sluggishly, rotten and infected.

And she’s bleeding too. From a mother who made it obvious how much she hated her daughters, from a domino chain of adults who could’ve reached out but none who cared enough to, and from the massive hole left from the death of the only person who gave a shit about her, who knew her, every inch of her, and who loved her and who didn’t deserve to die so alone and so scared.

It’s not a new wound, Peter realizes. It’s bleeding hard, but Jean had known. The moment hers and Sarah’s minds had connected for a fraction of a second over hundreds of miles. She couldn’t have admitted it to herself until she stared up at that vent and it had stared her back, but she had known that Sarah was dead, like a bullet lodged inside of her that she didn’t have to look at, even if it pulled and ached with every move she made.

“Whoa.” Ned’s voice yanks Peter back to reality, where he’s sitting in a sweaty heap in Frank’s sad boathouse. “You guys are having like a psychic conversation. That’s so cool.”

Jean drags a sleeve of her hoodie hard across her face and huffs with something like a laugh.

“But wait, sorry. I’m so confused.” Ned takes a step forward. He looks back at MJ. “We’re here because we’re worried about Spider-man, right?”

MJ sets the mug back down onto the table with a thud. She grimaces at Peter.

“But didn’t the news announce that — That he was OK?” Peter asks, shifting. His butt is going numb against the hard linoleum floor but he’s not sure he could get up on his own.

“MJ didn’t believe them.”

“Yeah, well, they went from reporting that — that he was almost dead to suddenly being like, oh, never mind, he’s fine.” MJ throws her hands up. “It was just weird. I was going to ask his friend, but he wasn’t home so I thought we’d just, you know. Wait a while.”

Ned shakes his head hard, turning to stare at Peter, casing him down from his untied shoes up to his unwashed hair. “Wait, but — Maynerd. Are you … Spider-man?”

MJ’s eyes dart back and forth between Ned and Peter. Peter opens his mouth and almost objects. The excuse is right there, under his tongue. A million lies, a default wall. MJ wouldn’t say anything if Peter didn’t tell Ned. Jean could probably even wipe Ned’s mind — wipe both of their minds — if he asked. But —

He thinks of May sitting on the side of the bed with him. Sunlight against his face, sunlight catching in her brown eyes. Her hand, soft and real, on his hand.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I’m Spider-man.”

Ned blinks. Peter can see the gears instantly going turbo in his head.

“Holy shit.”

“Uh,” Peter says after a moment where Ned gapes at him and MJ watches Ned and Jean watches Peter. “Could someone help me up? Off the ground?”

Jean immediately grabs his arm and MJ hustles over to grab the other, casting only one, quick suspicious glare at Jean as they heft Peter up and shuffle him over to the booth bench so that Peter can face the kitchen and front door. Ned hovers, his mouth working up and down. And he keeps hovering as Peter wipes the sweat off of his face, catching his breath as his aching heart slows down.

“Then that means,” Ned says loudly. “Your real name is Peter.”

Peter’s head snaps up. He hadn’t expected that and for a brief moment, the stupid hope that he can’t shake out of his heart, that Ned remembers, wells up. But no, Ned’s eyes are locked onto his and are shining but Peter can tell somehow, that Ned isn’t looking at him with any familiarity. That door remains closed.

Ned looks at MJ. “Right? You called Spider-man Peter, and, sorry if this is overstepping boundaries Spider-man, but your name is Peter?”

“Yeah,” Peter says faintly. “I’m Peter.”

“Wow, it’s so nice to meet you. Again. In the flesh, I mean, with your face.”

“How did you get shot?” MJ asks Peter, ignoring Ned. “Was it your friend? The Punisher, right?”

Ned whirls on her. “Bro, you knew Spider-man and you didn’t tell me?”

“Hang on, that’s on me,” Peter interjects. “I asked her not to. I just — I don’t like spreading around my identity and —“

“No, of course, Spiderman, I totally get it, I wasn’t trying to say that I’m entitled to know your identity or anything — ”

“Is it safe for you to be here?” MJ cuts in.

Peter nods. “Yeah, it’s really complicated. But yeah, he’s good. It was a misunderstanding.”

One of MJ’s eyebrows arches up, but Ned is whirling back on Peter. Peter can see him blinking as a million thoughts ping-pong in his brain. “Wait, why isn’t your healing factor working?”

Peter laughs, his head spinning. One hand grips the warm, pulsing wound in his chest, the other pressing against the plastic booth to steady himself. “How do you know about my healing factor?”

“There’s a whole mega-forum on it on the spider-tracker where we — I mean, they’ve figured out some potential coefficients for your recovery time by finding instances of you obviously breaking bones or some other immobilizing injuries during fights and then tracking when you came back. Sorry if that’s, like, invasive. But is it not working right now?”

“No, no, it’s working,” Peter says, his palm pressing against the throbbing wound in his chest. “He just really got me, like, in the heart. But I’m good.” MJ, Ned, and Jean all frown so Peter keeps talking fast. “Plus I’ve been having some weird stuff with my powers, my arachnid hormones have been fluctuating so that might be messing with it, I don’t know.”

“Whoa, what? You’re becoming more spider-like? Are you going to grow another set of arms? Or eyes? Or mandibles?”

“Ned, this probably isn’t the best time for this,” MJ says softly.

“Oh shit, you’re right, I’m so sorry I’ve just been such a big fan of you for years and this is such a big honor — Wait, no, I’m so sorry, what am I doing.” Ned shakes his head like a wet dog and then steps up towards Peter, drawing his shoulders back and placing his hand on his heart before dropping it fast and holding his arms awkwardly at his sides.

“Spider-man,” Ned says slowly and loudly, as though delivering an speech. Behind him, MJ’s face screws up in something that’s half-smile, half-cringe. “On behalf of myself and MJ and our entire high school class, all of the users of the Spidey Tracker and also the whole city of New York and the world, uh, I wanted to thank you. For always saving us.” His smile is wobbly and nervous. He sticks out his hand for Peter to shake. “Thank you, Spider-man. I know that you deserve way more than this but, I’ve always wanted to shake you. I mean, thank you. And shake your hand. In order to thank you.”

Peter blinks. The corners of his eyes sting and he has to swallow past the lump in his throat. Knowing that his well-being was being blasted on major news networks and seeing the cheering crowd in front of the hospital had been almost too much to comprehend. Too big for him to grasp that they were for him. But here, with Ned, who does every single thing from the bottom of his heart and who’s face is shining in earnestness, Peter feels a hot, choking emotion crawl up his throat.

Peter lifts a shaky hand and grabs Ned’s warm, outstretched hand. They shake. Ned’s hand is bigger that Peter remembers, but so is Peter’s, and despite the strange new way their hands fit together, Peter feels a wave of memory was over him. And Peter doesn’t really mean to do it. He’s teetering on the edge of exhaustion with too many emotions and revelations going on, the pain still a hysterical pulse inside of him. But his body acts on autopilot and his hand does the second part of their secret handshake.

And Ned’s does too. They both freeze for a moment before they do the next part. And then the next. They step through every part of the handshake perfectly in sync. When they stop, Peter’s hand still in Ned’s, Ned’s face is drawn up in confusion. MJ’s smile is gone and she’s staring laser eyes at Ned’s hands. Peter feels dizzy.

“Whoa,” Ned breathes out. His eyes lock back onto Peter. And there, behind his glasses, the light in his eyes twinkles differently. As if the door is open. Peter feels the hairs on his arms stand on end, a chilly sensation up his spine.

“Peter,” Ned says, only he says it differently this time —

No. This is crazy. Peter is tricking himself, breaking his own heart again, but Ned — his Ned even though it can’t be his Ned — is looking at him as though Peter exists and —

The front door explodes open, crashing into the wooden cabinets.

“The fuck is going on here?” Frank barks as he thunders down the stairs. He doesn’t have any guns out, but his hand is near his hip as though he’s a second away from grabbing one. The other hand gripping his heavy bag over his shoulder is white-knuckle tight, and his every moment is like a big cat coiling for a leap.

MJ swings to face him, feet and shoulders squared up.

“It’s OK,” Jean says, holding a hand out. “It’s OK, they were just worried about him.”

“So they break into my place? And who the fuck is this guy?” Frank demands, waving a hand wildly at Ned, who hasn’t looked away once from Peter.

“Hey, we were right to be worried seeing that your the guy who shot him,” MJ says, stepping forward with nothing but her balled fists.

Anger and disgust snarls over Frank’s face and he lets out another tirade, waving his hand towards the looney-tunes booby traps he has set up through the warehouse while MJ snaps back and Peter doesn’t hear a word of it because Ned, wide-eyed and dazed, says, “Holy shit. Peter.”

“Yeah,” Peter says breathlessly. His heart is racing in his chest. No way, he thinks. No way, this isn’t possible, he has to stop thinking it now. “What — What are you —?”

“I don’t understand,” Ned says. “I know you?”

Peter can’t move. MJ and Frank’s argument drops away and in the corner of Peter’s eye, he sees MJ twist back to them, staring at Ned.

“I do know you. I know you. We grew up together, we —“ Ned cuts off, pressing a palm to the side of his head. “The shit? What is this?”

“You remember,” Peter breathes. His vision is blurring with tears. It’s hard to breathe again, but not because of his bullet wound. “That’s impossible.”

“How could I — Peter. Holy shit.” Ned’s voice is thick. His face is stunned, as if he had been struck upside the head. “Where did you go?”

Peter glances at Jean desperately, an echo of a worry that she’s doing this somehow but he feels her honest confusion and the pulse of shame that Peter would think that of her.

But Ned can’t have remembered. Peter can’t believe it. It’s impossible. As in, actually impossible. Hope is so thick that Peter is choking on it, but he can’t fall for this again just to have his heart broken —

“Do you remember your thirteenth birthday?” Peter asks.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Ned says, his eyes shining. “You spent the night and we watched the Stargate movie and then we snuck downstairs to drink my Lola’s peach schnapps but I got so nervous I threw up after like two sips.”

“And then we used dish detergent to clean it up.”

“And we were making a mess and when she started to come downstairs we ran for it all the way down to that shop on the corner with those stinky ham sandwiches.”

“Mr. Roberto gave us —”

“He gave us those Flintstone ice-cream push-ups. We had dish detergent all over our hands and knees and the popsicle tasted like soap.”

“Fuck,” Peter whispers. He feels a cold tear slip down his cheek. He doesn’t know what to say, what to think, it’s too much —

Then front door blasts open again. Peter sees two bodies, both wearing dark tactical gear with their heads hidden above the slope of the ceiling, and Yelena Belova’s voice calling out with long, sing-songey vowels, “Hellooo? Spidermaaan?”

Franks whirls around, reaching for his gun this time, Jean grips Peter’s shoulder, rabbit panic beating down their connection, and MJ fumbles for the mug again.

A million thoughts ricochet in Peter’s skull and he manages to squeak out, “Mask!”

Immediately Jean’s hands slam over Peter’s face followed by Ned’s, his thumb jamming Peter’s closed eye, and he hears MJ call out, “Wait, wait, he’s not, uh, decent!”

The boots stop on the stairs and Yelena says, “Oh? Uh. Alright.”

Peter twists so he can speak around Jean and Ned’s grasping face shield. “Get my mask,” he whispers.

“MJ’s getting it.”

“Here, here!”

Jean pulls her hands away to fumble with Peter’s mask before she and Ned yank it over Peter’s head. It’s cool and unwashed, smelling of smoke and sweat.

Peter fixes it and shoves Jean and Ned’s hands away before calling out, “OK, OK, you can come in.”

The visors of his mask are a little smudged, giving the world a weird fuzzy halo. Yelena ducks her head down past the ceiling and smiles. Her eyeliner is an icy blue, her blonde hair sticking out in tufts.

She gives a little wave.“Sorry to catch you at such a bad time, Spider-man. And look, so many friends!”

“I don’t recall giving you permission to come in,” Frank growls, his pistol trained straight at an uncaring Yelena.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Frank Castle sir, this is a very nice place you have but don’t worry, we are just the friendly Avengers making a house call on our mutual friend, Spiderman,” she says with her near permanent smirk, walking easily into the kitchen.

Behind her, also dressed in dark tactical gear, is the Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes. His brown hair is tucked behind his ears, his eyes darting around with practiced wariness.

Peter’s head spins even more. The last time he had seen Bucky Barnes was at Tony Stark’s funeral. They had never really known each other well. The first time they had met was at that fight between the Avengers at the Berlin Airport, just before Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark broke up. But still. Bucky had been nice enough. And it’s bizarre to see someone from that era of Peter’s life look at Peter with no recognition.

“Holy shit,” Ned says for the fourth time in twenty minutes, his jaw hanging loose. His hand is still pressed against his head. He looks as dizzy as Peter feels. “You’re the Avengers.”

“Yes, yes, we’re a big deal,” Yelena says, looking away from Frank’s trained pistol as though it’s nothing. “Look, this is just a house call. We got a notification that Spiderman had left the hospital and we wanted to make sure there was no funny business going on.”

The New Avengers were making a house call on the Punisher to make sure that Spiderman was alright? Peter’s head is really beginning to hurt. His heart is making rabbit leaps in his aching chest.

“No funny business,” Peter says faintly. “I just wanted to get out of the hospital.”

“Are you sure?” Yelena’s eyes dart up to Jean who is still standing beside Peter and her friendly mask cracks a little bit, her eyes sharpening like a knife. “You are Jean Grey, yes? The telepath? How nice to meet you.”

Peter feels Jean stiffen both in her grip on his shoulder and through their connection.

“Hang on, hang on,” Peter says, holding a hand up. “I can explain everything, Jean is with me. She's good. I had to save her after I turned her in, I should never have trusted them. They were experimenting on her, torturing her. Uh, Metzger from Damage Control. Do you know what happened to him?”

“He disappeared,” Bucky says, slowly, his eyes sliding from one person to the next. “But the reports we have of everything are sketchy.”

Yelena’s gaze is steady. “We were hoping you could fill us in a bit.”

“OK, yeah. Yes. I can explain everything,” Peter says with a side glance at Ned who is still staring at him with wide eyes, and MJ, who he can tell is analyzing every single word, twitch, pause. “I’ll explain everything."

Peter takes a second to breathe in deep. He feels dizzy. Already he can feel his mind sifting through the facts, picking and choosing the safest path to not have to show himself, to keep himself as protected as possible. But he thinks of May on the bed, her brows drawn together as she had smiled, a little sadly. And how insane it is that Frank had cried for him and that MJ and Ned had come looking for him, that Jean stayed with him despite all of the danger she was in.

Peter hasn’t let these walls down in five years. There was no need, when there was no one on the other side.

But Jean, Frank, Yelena, Bucky, MJ, and Ned are all staring at him. They’re worried for him. Peter knows them. They’re good people.

Peter feels May’s warm hand in his own and squeezes it.

Then he launches in.

It’s hard to start, but as Peter stutters out the words, it becomes easier to focus on the details and not the judging six pairs of eyes trained on him. He starts with Scorpion’s escape, meeting Yelena in her office, Jean’s files, the deal with Metzger. He stumbles as he remembers the night going to Ned and MJ’s party, but there’s something clawing at him that needs to get out, so he tells them, even if his face warms as he tells Ned and MJ that he’d been watching Ned’s instagram page and he sees Bucky’s frown, as though wondering how this could possibly be important. But it’s like a band aid coming off. Peter chants through the weird changes in his spider abilities, how he talked to Bruce Banner at ESU, his idea for the universal inhibitor, how Jean found his apartment and took over MJ.

He feels Jean’s shame and hot guilt as he tells it, feels her pull away a bit as though tucking herself under a shell, but it’s important for everyone to be on the same page. Though he does leave out the kiss. He feels MJ’s heavy gaze on him as he skips over that detail.

Then he barrels through how he finished the inhibitor, the attack on the DODC headquarters where he fought the Hulk, how the Hulk himself stopped attacking him, how Metzger lied about Jean stealing the word Sarah out of his head.

“After that, they took her to their facility on Roosevelt Island,” Peter says. He glances up at her. “We, uh, mind-linked so I know all this now.”

“Mind-linked?” Yelena asks incredulously.

“Yeah. Like a mind meld. When she woke up she was in a large, wide room designed to keep her from using her powers. They imprisoned her. And they started experimenting on her. Torturing her. They had some way to force her telepathic abilities out of her in strong bursts. They were trying to make her stronger.”

He pauses. Takes a deep breath. “Two years ago her sister was kidnapped by the DODC but Jean had no idea where to find her until three months ago when she got a telepathic message. It was a less than a second, a brief flash of an image and the only thing she got from it was the word VMAX.”

He sends a tentative, wordless question to Jean asking whether he should continue and gets a quiet affirmation back. He squares his shoulders. It feels hot with the mask on.

“That’s why she was trying to get into DODC headquarters. To find her sister but she didn’t know what that message meant until she was in that chair. Metzger wasn’t lying about knowing about VMAX. He didn’t know. It really stood for VentMax. It was a label on the air vent right about the chair where they were torturing Jean.”

“Wait,” MJ said, brows furrowed together. “So —“

“So Sarah died in that chair. Looking up at the vent. She died in the middle of the experiment and sent Jean the last image she saw. Which was that air vent.”

Peter can feel Jean, cold and distant as a satellite. MJ’s face shutters. Frank looks grim but unsurprised. Peter wonders if he and Jean had some heart-to-heart in the hospital. Neither Yelena nor Bucky move an inch but they both sharpen somehow, the air around them ionizing.

Peter picks his way through the rest of what happened. It’s impossible to describe the moment he and Jean connected minds, so he skims past it. There’s a tense moment too as Peter breezes past taking the bullet for Jean, but he sees Yelena and Bucky glance towards Frank.

“The psionic field caused a lot of accidents and injuries. We are lucky no one died. It could’ve been much worse,” Yelena says slowly, all layers of irony and humor stripped back. Her eyes lock onto Jean, who looks away, hot guilt lapping inside of her. "The DODC are being blamed for it. They're being torn apart by other government agencies.”

”Metzger has disappeared with no leads,” Bucky says. “We’re not like the old Avengers, our hands are tied on a lot of things. But we should have all access to all of DODC’s records. I’ll personally make sure the right people are involved.”

“Jean needs security, too. Her abilities will be detailed in those records, she’s — she’s something new. She needs people to look out for her.”

“We can protect her,” Yelena says, turning to Jean. “They will not touch you again. This, I promise we can do.”

Jean doesn’t react but Peter feels a shaky, startled relief tremor through in her mind.

“And Dr. Banner?” Peter asks. “It wasn’t his fault that the Hulk came out.” Peter feels another squirmy wave of guilt from Jean.

Bucky grimaces. “Bruce made it very clear that he wanted nothing more to do with the Avengers. So I’m not sure we can step in at all. But we can try.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Peter finds himself saying. He thinks of the split moment he saw Banner being packed into the ambulance. Banner had always been so nice to him. “If I can.”

Bucky nods. “I’ll do my best.”

“Wait.” Ned interrupts. He’s still standing beside Peter, still looking stricken. “I’m sorry I —Maybe you want to talk about this later. But I’m so, so confused.“

Peter lets out a shaky breath. He doesn't have to do this. Cold, shivering fear beats down his veins. Everything in him is whispering to shut up now. Let things be. Leave the world as it is. Everyone safely distanced from him, and him, safely tucked away from all that can hurt. He can’t loose them if he doesn’t have them. They can’t hate him if they don’t know him.

Jean turns and looks at him, her eyes the green glow of a summer tide pool. May’s eyes had gleamed golden in the sunlight. Ned, his black eyes somehow catching every light in the room like mini galaxies, looks like he’s about to burst. MJ is still caged off, silent, but Peter can see her eyes darting, cataloguing everything. Frank is silent as the grave behind them all.

“OK. Yeah. I have one more thing to tell everyone.”

Peter reaches up and grips the mask. He pulls it off with a few soft tugs. He can feel all eyes locked on him. Yelena’s eyebrows shoot up. Peter thinks this is the first time he’s ever seen her surprised.

“So. This is weird. And hard to explain.” Peter stares at his hands balled on the table. His face is hot. His heart is beating hard. “But, uh, I used to be on the Avengers. I knew Tony Stark. I was really close to him actually. And I fought against Thanos.” He forces his eyes up. Each gaze feels like a knife, prying under his shell and he has the sense of his control slipping through his fingers. But he made a promise to May. And he can’t keep doing this. “I knew Captain Rogers. And you, actually,” he says to Bucky Barnes, whose brows are dipped low. “I was at the fight at the Berlin Airport, though I was in tenth grade and really didn’t know what was going on. And I didn’t know you before,” he says to Yelena. “But I knew Natasha. I knew her pretty well before. She’d call me паучок sometimes and would make these awful bologna sandwiches with relish.”

Yelena blinks as though she’d been struck.

“And I knew both of you,” he says now to MJ and Ned. “I knew both of you really well actually. We were —“

“You were in our high school class. That’s why we had so run-ins with Spider-man. You were Spider-man,” Ned says. The sunlight from the half-lowered blinds of Frank’s cloudy boat window glitters in his eyes. “I remember.”

“But how?” MJ demands. She looks angry. Her arms are folded tight against her chest. “How did you remember that?”

“I don’t know, we shook hands, and did that handshake. And then it was just all there, but — I can’t believe I forgot. I can’t believe it.”

Peter pulls his hands into his lap because they’re trembling too hard. Ned remembers. Ned remembers.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you at all,” Bucky says, slowly. “I know my memory isn’t the best sometimes, but I remember that fight. In Berlin.”

“I know. Everyone forgot. But I was there. I webbed you and Falcon up. That’s why you were out of commission for most of it.” Bucky frowns. Even if he didn't remember Peter, he had to have remembered that he was out of the fight for most of it. Peter swallows. “Five years ago my identity got leaked, right before we were graduating. Everyone knew I was Peter Parker and it ruined everything. They also thought I killed this guy that I definitely didn’t, but everyone knew you were friends with me and they turned down our MIT applications because of it,” he said to Ned and MJ. “So I went to Stephen Strange.”

“You mean the Sorcerer Supreme man. With the big cloak,” Yelena says slowly.

“Yeah. I asked him for a spell to make everyone forget my identity, to forget that Spider-Man was Peter Parker, only the spell wanted to make everyone forget me completely and when he tried to change it, the spell freaked out. It started summoning people from other universes, people who knew different versions of me — And it was all really, really complicated. But then, stuff happened and May, my aunt. She died.” Peter has to stare to the right out the window to say it. He doesn’t think he’s ever said those words. He never had anyone to say them to. “And Mr. Stark was dead and it was ruining Ned and MJ’s lives, so I told Dr. Strange to just go with the original spell. To make everyone forget. That sent all of the multiverse people home. It fixed everything.”

“We were on a roof,” Ned whispers. And then, for the first time in years and years, even before he forgot Peter, a bolt of anger crosses his face. “You were supposed to tell us. You swore you’d tell us.”

“I — I was going to. I swear I was going to, I meant it when I said I would. But after it happened, it was so hard to explain and I just — I was so scared that you wouldn’t believe me. Or if you did believe me and then you got hurt. Or killed. I had just lost May and I couldn’t —“

Peter chokes and then shuts up, staring out the window again. A moment of silence hangs heavy throughout the boat.

“Sorry,” Peter says after a moment, swiping a sleeve of his stolen sweatshirt over his eyes. “This must be weird. And I understand if you don’t believe me, the spell wiped me from everything but I can prove it, I helped Mr. Stark a lot before Thanos and you can cross-reference what I say with all of his files — ”

“No. No, kid,” Bucky says, an intensity in his voice. “It’s fine. I believe you. I don’t remember but, this makes sense. Somehow. And don’t apologize. This is a lot.”

Yelena nods. “It’s alright, Peter,” she says. It’s an electric shock to hear her say his name. “This is a pretty big potato. And it also makes sense to me.”

Peter blinks. “We didn’t know each other before though.”

“No, but you were always very sad. A very specific sad. I didn’t know why. And Natasha —” Yelena fumbles her sister’s name and takes a moment before shoving the rest out. “One time we talked about my sister, and you were sad then too, more sad than you should've been talking about a stranger. And she made the most disgusting sandwiches. I believe you.”

“Ah,” Peter says. His voice is watery. He should be feeling relief or happiness but all he can feel is some drowning emotion that’s crashing over him, again and again.

“They really do believe you, Peter,” Jean whispers. “And Ned really remembers you.” She glances are the room. “Sorry, I’m not trying to pry, I just — I can tell.”

“Alright,” Frank says loudly, shoving his way forward. “Now that that’s all cleared up, the kid’s got to eat. He’s been on an IV the last three days that didn’t compensate for his metabolism and look at him. He’s one stiff breeze away from falling over.”

“Oh shit,” Yelena says, looking sharply at Peter. “I didn't think of that. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine.”

“You really don’t look fine.”

“He could barely walk here,” Jean cuts in. “We tried to get him to stay in the hospital but he wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, you look like shit,” MJ says. She turns towards Yelena and Bucky. “His spider powers were going haywire during all of this, it has to have been taxing on his system.”

“Plus they had to sew his heart back together,” Frank says, his voice flat. Behind him, Peter realizes, he’s put a big steel pot on his stove and the air smells like propane and chili. “He was in surgery for six hours.”

“You should come to the Tower,” Yelena says, leaning over the booth bench towards Peter. “We’ve got lots of medical stuff for super-powered people. We’ve got several metahumans on our team, we know people who can give you the good stuff.”

“No, no, really I’m fine.”

“He should probably get his bandages changed,” Ned says.

“Do you have clean bandages here?” MJ asks Frank.

“Of course I do.”

“We can ship some medical stuff here, no?” Yelena asks, turning to Bucky.

“Yeah, sure, and we have scanners too, if he needs to get checked out again.”

“A good IV is probably the biggest thing, he has to be dehydrated to hell and back.”

“Could he use your scanners to analyze his spider hormones?” MJ asks Yelena, her arms still crossed and it makes Peter’s mind spin even more that she’d care enough to ask for him. “I don’t think he has a good handle on all the changes going on, he can’t go swinging around and not know, and he’s been using retrofitted old tech. There’s no way it’s that accurate.”

“Of course, yes. He should’ve just asked we have a million machines laying around we don’t know jack shit about. If you,” Yelena says, looking at Peter. “Knew Stark then you’d know way more about all of it than we do. It’s all yours.”

“Wait,” Ned says to Peter. “Did the spell erase you from government records and everything? Then there’s no way you’d have, like, insurance.”

“Who is going to charge Spider-man's insurance?”

“Uh, the American health care system?”

“Peter,” Yelena says. “They send you bill, you send it straight to us, I’m serious.”

“How have you been getting money and stuff? Do you have a job? Does the city pay Spider-man at all?”

“Uh —“

“All he’s eaten for the last few weeks is Little Caesars,” Jean says grimly. “And his place is a dump. He sleeps on an old couch and takes showers once a week at a gym.”

Yelena turns on Peter with a her mouth open as though personally offended and Ned says, “Dude, that is not healthy.”

“He got the place cheap because of the asbestos,” Jean keeps going.

“Dude,” Ned says.

“OK,” Peter whispers loudly at Jean. “You don’t have to —“

“To what?” MJ cuts in. “Tell us the truth?”

“No!” Peter stutters, taken aback. “No, I didn’t mean that.”

“You are not going back there,” Yelena says. “We have so much room in the tower.”

“Or he can stay with us,” MJ says and immediately reddens when Ned and Peter both turn to stare at her. “I mean, it makes sense, right? You were going to be with us before the spell. We can make room.” She looks away to stare at the wall, her cheeks radiating and her fingers digging into her arms.

“Yeah dude, yes, you have to stay with us.”

“I don’t —

“And you can too,” Ned says, turning to Jean. “We don’t have a lot of room, but we have a couch at least, or you can share a bed with MJ.”

“Uh —” Jean stutters.

"Hang on," MJ says.

“No, she should stay with us,” Yelena pushes in. “They both should, we have top security and lots of resources, you would both be safe.”

MJ’s lips twist. “Yeah, with every eye in the government on them.”

“Hey, give us some credit. I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t believe I could protect them,” Yelena retorts. “We actually have a lot of experience of hiding crazy strong metahumans.”

“What? From hiding who?”

Yelena points sharply at MJ. “Exactly.”

“OK, OK, give the kid some breathing room,” Frank barks, pushing his way through the ring. “What he needs right now is some goddamn peace and quiet. And you, “ he says, sliding a chipped bowl of steaming chili in front of Peter and giving him a death glare. “Eat. Now.”

After that things start to slip away from Peter. His hands shake so hard that he can barely lift a spoon up to his mouth. The chili is burning hot and over seasoned, but with each sip, a fraction of strength pours down Peter’s limbs. The conversation keeps going around him, but the exhaustion from before begins spreads over him like a heavy net, pulling him down, down. Even the pain starts to fade. Peter’s aware that they’re talking about him, about his injuries, where he’ll live, what he’ll need, everything he’s done. Ned is reciting through what he remembered about Peter’s superhero shenanigans with the old Avengers and Jean is snitching about how much pain Peter is in.

At one point, as Peter’s eyelids begin to slide down over and over, Peter’s aware of Yelena taking Jean aside. The connection between them dims a bit, like a door being pulled to but not quite closing. And Jean’s eyes are red when she comes back, her spirit a little stronger.

A some point, Peter is slid over and Ned is beside him, his shoulder a solid warmth against Peter’s. MJ says something and Peter has a glimpse of her eyes, dark and lovely and so, so soft. There’s the scrape of dishes being stack and washed. Jean begins to fade too, her head falling back to rest against the back of the booth. She hums a song in her head, a melody from the radio, like a lullaby sung in another room.

Peter’s eyes close.

Time slips.

When he opens them the light has changed, turning golden and liquid. The boat is quieter. Yelena and Bucky are gone. And so is MJ. And Peter’s half-eaten bowl of chili.

“C’mon, buddy.” Ned is standing at his side, pulling at Peter’s shoulders to lead him out of the booth. Once Peter totters to his feet, Ned throws one of Peter’s arms over his shoulder. Jean is there too, leading Peter down the stairs into the under belly of the ship. “Time to lay down.”

Peter feels like a wrung out towel. “MJ?” He manages to ask as he stumbles down the short set of stairs, leaning heavily on Ned.

“She just went to run and grab us some stuff for tonight. OK, here, c’mon,” Ned says, leading Peter down onto a soft, worn leather couch in the corner. Peter sinks into its deep cushions. Jean throws a heavy, acrylic crocheted blanket over his lap and then kicks off her shoes, curling up on the other end of the couch and tugging the other half of the blanket over her legs. The connection between them buzzes warm and strong.

“Frank said that we could stay here tonight. He’s pretty cool,” Ned says as he drags over an armchair, clearing out the tower of plastic boxes that had been stack on top of it.

“You’re not leaving?” Peter slurs, looking from Jean and to Ned.

“I’m staying,” Jean says. She hugs a pillow against her chest and stretches out her legs, her toes digging into Peter’s leg. She gives Peter a small smile. Peter can feel her bumblebee buzz, the relief at being able to lay down, a strange feeling of hope that’s so new to her, she barely knows what it is.

“And dude,” Ned says. When Peter looks at him, he’s more serious than he’s ever been before. “I’m not ever letting you out of my sight again.”

Peter is on a couch.

It’s dark. But on the other end of the room, a window is open showing the New York Bay, glistening under a gibbous moon. Blue night creeps in, gilding the room in silver. Peter watches it in silence, a deep, deep peace laying soft on him.

His heart beats, steady and strong.

In the cool, thin light Peter sees the others sleeping around him. Jean’s curled up on the other end of the couch, her hands pulled up close to her face, her heels pressed against his thigh. She’s dreaming of a park somewhere far, far away. A happy memory, frozen in time.

On Peter’s other side, Ned is conked out in the arm chair, his head thrown back and his mouth open wide to the ceiling as he sleeps. He’s always slept like that. In classrooms, on the bus, when they would sit on the floor at May’s or on his Lola’s couch.

Further away and half hidden in the shadows, MJ is stretched out on the lower bunk of the cot. A starchy sheet is pulled up over her legs. There’s an open notebook on her chest, filled with thin, sharp writing, as though she had been hard at work before drifting to sleep.

And there, in front of the window, is Frank. He’s showered and changed clothes and is leaning over a small workstation, cleaning something iron with a rag. He works at it slowly.

Then he pauses. He lifts his head and for a moment Peter thinks he’s been caught. But Frank looks out the other way. Out the window. Out at the water and the moon. The moment slips on and on. The waters of the harbor shift. Then Frank looks down and goes back to his rag.

Peter lets his eyes drift close and he floats. They’re all alive. They’re here. He’s home.