Peter has a nightmare about Westcott, which — despite what people would think to the contrary — is not at all a common affair anymore. The bad dreams had sort of tapered off with time, effort, and a hell of a lot of therapy (once a week, every other Wednesday, at one hour a day, back when May and Ben had made enough money to skate by on the insurance costs; how're you, Peter; are you happy with your diet?; what involvement do you have with the other kids, Peter?). Therapy had cut into crafting time with Ned; ergo, he barely tolerated it.
But it was good that he did.
Thing is, the brain never runs on one's own schedule, you know? He had a bomb-ass day: he got his favorite Chinese dish with May for his 16th birthday, Mr. Stark texted him on another year well lived (and an upgrade to his web shooting distance, which he swore was strictly business), and Ned bought him a new pair of Nikes after he lost one of his old shoes in a dumpster mid-transformation.
He also got an A on his extra credit paper about thermodynamics.
A lot of people probably expect the nightmares of a once terribly traumatized kid to be perfectly sculpted windows to their mental strife, not smorgasbords of utter nonsense with memories spliced in, like how they actually end up. Because yeah, there's the feeling of heavy hands on him from time to time, or the glint of too-perfect teeth, and all kinds of ugly sensations he's evaded like the plague since he was ten years old. Then there's that inability to distinguish fact from fiction, the outlandish from the normal, because he swears he's trapped in his room with Steven blocking the doorway, cutting off all paths to freedom.
But mid-assault Skip's wearing Spider-Man-themed underwear when he peels off those stupidly tight jeans, and Peter ends up so infuriated by him being a fan, he spends the rest of his nightmare screaming noiselessly while May tells him to calm down, she'll just order pizza, it's really no big deal — "Ned, do you want pizza, or chinese?" And Steven crawls up the side of his bed like he's some kind of predator (he is) — "May, what are you talking about?! May, look at him, look at what he's trying to do, that's NOT Ned!" — Peter lays there in his bed (he's dreaming), doesn't remember how he ended up laying down, but he's there and Steven looks down at him, stops trying to touch him, and says —
"Oh, that's fucking gross" —
And then Peter wakes up like he's been hit by a surge of electricity, fingers like claws over his chest and breath punched out of him by an unseen force... and then he groans meekly at the warm, wet patch around his boxers. Cool. Alright. He scrubs at his face and looks sideways; there's no Steven Westcott, just an alarm clock that says he's not getting up for another five hours. He hasn't dreamed about Steven in at least a year, and he hasn't pissed the bed in just as long, which was a record unbeaten.
What would Tony Stark think, if he knew the person he had offered the role of an Avenger to wet the bed at age sixteen?
The sweat doesn't get a chance to cool in the furrow of his collarbone before he's up and shimmying off his underwear and old gym shorts off to put on a fresh pair of pajama bottoms, balling everything up into the soiled sheets so that he can just drag it all to the washer and dryer; maybe if he's quiet enough, he thinks, he can avoid waking May up. Last thing he wants is to inconvenience her sleeping schedule in the middle of an already too-hot New York night, all over something that's really not a big deal. Yes, his jaw hurts from the grinding session, and yes, he feels like he'll never get back to sleep ever again in his entire life, but it's no big deal.
Recovery's not always just ending up in a fetal position in a shower stall and letting boiling water spray on your skin until it's pink and clean. Sometimes it's just sighing like you're doing basic chores (like laundry, it's always laundry, Spider-Man shouldn't be wetting the bed, he stopped a dude from crashing a plane into an amusement park, this is shameful and stupid and he should be over it, but here he is, carting away a bundle of dirty bed covers in the dead of night—), and here you are, knowing full-well you're gonna be up for hours now anyway, so you might as well make yourself some coffee and watch Adult Swim or stupid infomercial ads in the living room...
Same amount of shame, but at least it saves on the water bill. No sad-crying in the shower. He might've done that a little after he'd lost the suit and Tony's approval, but that's for then, and this is now. A 'now' he grimaces to work around. Ugh. It's stupid. He hasn't had a night like this in over a year, and he's more than a little frustrated it's happened at all. Steven Westcott's been out of prison and vanished into obscurity since Peter started high school, and he'll never see that overly sharp grin ever again save for the terrible tombs in his head when the lights go out—
"Peter?" a sleepy voice calls, and he jumps a little in his skin, turning to look at May's lingering form in the dimness of the apartment. "What's going on? Everything alright?"
"Everything's fine, May, just had..." But if there's anything May's good at, it's telling before she even finishes asking — she steps towards him with a furrow in her brow, eyes drifting to the familiar sight of sheets being covertly (or not so covertly) dumped for washing. Her expression softens, and he forces himself to continue with a flush to his cheeks, "Just had a little accident."
"Oh, honey," she says softly. It's never demeaning, when May sounds like that, because he knows her heart all too well. He's not surprised by her wandering over and taking the evidence from his hands, nudging him with her shoulder. "It's okay, it's perfectly fine. Just go relax for a moment, catch your breath. I can handle this."
"I'm sorry," he starts.
"No, no, don't apologize. We look out for each other, don't we, Peter?"
She shouldn't have to look out for anything right now (it's so early in the morning), but she does, because she's the actual best — just like she's the best for not eternally grounding him the moment she walked into his room and found him head-to-toe dressed in Spider-Man's uniform, blue and red so searing it'd stolen her breath. That was a rough night in the Parker residence to say the least, and despite all of his misgivings, failing at keeping May from panic was not from lack of trying. Her nephew was and is Spider-Man. She freaked out. She made herself some tea and devised rules and regulations for the friendly neighborhood spider while trying not to employ an Italian brand of wrath towards both Peter and Anthony Stark in that order.
Spider-Man still needs his aunt, she had said once. Don't you forget it.
He wanders back to the couch now that he's been thoroughly disarmed of ashamed sheet-cleaning, rubbing his arm in defeat as he lays back against the cushions and listens to the beginnings of a whirring washer; wash the moment of weakness away, as they say. He doesn't like to think of any of the past anymore, but it's not exactly something that simply evaporates from his life, no more than Uncle Ben's death can leave his thoughts on a chilly New York worknight. He doesn't really ask why me anymore, because any pamphlet on the subject in the world will tell you why. He was extremely small for his age, skinny, inexperienced, awkward, and malleable. And lucky him, he already had a slew of self-confidence issues before a pedophilic high school student honed in on him, so he also adapts pretty well at letting that self-disdain go by the time May comes walking back into the living room.
Her shawl has returned from whence it came when she slouches down beside Peter, their temples touching as she runs her hand through the unruly brown locks at the nape of his neck. The silence carries for a few minutes while they sit, fitted like worried puzzle pieces. Then she speaks up. "This hasn't happened in a while, huh?"
He hums in response, not really wanting to address any of it, but she clicks her tongue and stills the hand in his hair to scratch there with comfortably sharp nails.
"Uh-uh, you know how this works, Peter Parker. It's just you and me, right? Something like this comes back to you, you know we can't let it sit on its own. What's going on that took you back to all of that? Everything okay?" And really, sometimes there's nothing, nothing at all that he can think of to cause it all to come back again.
"I dunno, really... Wrong dream, wrong time? I stopped someone from kidnapping a little girl the other day, and I guess I thought about it a lot then — but that was days ago, and I swear, it hasn't really — I mean, I don't think it's really causing me any problems." He doesn't. It was a terribly ridiculous nightmare, and he'll be a little crabby come school-time, but it's nothing that will ruin his life. Skip already tried that, and he failed, and that makes Peter feel a little better.
"Okay... But if it keeps up, you'll let me know? I just want to make sure you're good."
"I am good. I am." He licks his lips, glancing at her with soft eyes. "Are you good?"
She seems a little surprised, eyebrows raising slowly as if it's the strangest thing he could have asked.
"Me? Of course." May doesn't say you're the one we should worry about, but they both know that's what's going on here. "Peter, I just..." She breathes through her nose, a hand sliding to palm his cheek gently; she looks at him with such kindness, and some nights, he doesn't know how to handle it. Tonight, though, it makes his chest warm. "I always want to do what's best for you. Sometimes I don't always know what that is — so... bear with me while I stumble around and pretend I know what I'm doing."
Peter cocks his head and smiles, the corner of his lips crinkling against her thumb.
"I'm sorry I'm such a handful."
"Hey — what have I told you about apologizing over something like this?"
"Save it for when I actually do something stupid?"
"Bingo, Spider-Man."
Her smile fades a little, and the glint against her glasses doesn't hide the shift into something sad, something guilty. The years that followed weren't just Peter feeling apologetic; Ben and May felt culpable in his childhood ruination, which was just as ridiculous, because Steven Westcott was the most trustworthy and kind-hearted boy on the whole block, and nobody saw it coming; not even his own mother, who had never stopped trying to defend him.
Peter wonders what it's like, to have a son who abuses instead of one that is the wide-eyed victim. Peter also wonders what it's like, to be the failed protector of the closest thing to a son you'd ever have. He would never want to be May or Ben. He'd never want to learn that the child he'd tried so hard to protect and love and worry over was suffering in silence. He was never the only one suffering — and he thinks, maybe, that their suffering was a different breed, but just as devastating. When he feels super low and awful to himself, he thinks of how much easier May's life could have been, if Peter Parker hadn't been unceremoniously shoved through their doorway.
He thinks more highly of himself now than he did then, but it won't fix how much rests on May's shoulders.
"... May?"
"Yes, honey?"
"It wasn't your fault, either. Sometimes, bad things just — happen."
"Or bad people," she says, strained in a way that is a mother trying not to crack under the weight of her son's earnest stare. Like she's done a thousand times, when she had been tucking him into bed at age eleven, when he was too scared to sleep, or when he would come home in a dizzying panic because a girl wanted to kiss him — a girl who didn't know how messed up he was, so why would he kiss her back, knowing he'd imprint that kind of maddening anxiety onto her? He squeezes May's hand.
"Or bad people."
The silence grows, but only for a moment more.
"Hey, remember when you worried about lasting childhood trauma and not me stopping cars with my bare hands?"
"Are you trying to get your costume thrown out?"
"It's a pretty expensive costume, May."
"I'm sure Mr. Stark will survive the financial blow."
"But my internship—"
"... Magic Pillow? There's really a whole hour-long infomercial about pillows? How hard is it to make a pillow?"
And they lay there for a couple of hours, chattering away in their PJs and letting the dryer work its magic, drinking cups of hot coffee while they make microwavable french toast... which a crime to breakfast foods everywhere, but it's filling and heavy on his gurgling stomach. At 6 in the morning, he drags on the NASA tee he found at the thrift store, pops in his headphones, and heads off to catch the train to 36 Avenue — Midtown tech. His new Nikes squeak a little on the train floors. He pushes the nightmares out of his mind and focuses on how he'll be swinging over the streets of Queens at three, keeping people safe — or at the very least, maybe a little happier.
School bustles.
Flash bicycles by and slaps him on the ass as he crosses the street.
MJ steals an earbud and criticizes his taste in music.
Ned apologizes profusely for crushing a spider in his bathtub with a flip-flop.
May tosses clean sheets on his bed before she heads out.
And things are business as usual, the past buried under lit homework and Spanish tests.
The world would never have to know his other secret identity: the one out of twenty.