Chapter 3

Home 'Coming'

No one had bothered to look up to see the person walking up the side of a thirty-plus floor build in the middle of Manhattan. If they had, Peter would have waved at them. Instead though, he took a leisurely midnight stroll up the side of the Baxter Building and broke in from the top floor, almost just like he'd done when he'd first got his powers and was looking for a paycheck – some things never changed.

The F4 were gone, off to somewhere he didn't know and didn't plan on sticking around long enough to ask. But there was a note waiting for him where the suit was, exactly in the first place Peter would have looked and in the last place he'd been. They were both waiting for him.

"Just in case you change your mind," it said in handwriting he didn't recognize. It didn't take him long to guess who'd written it though.

He was a little disturbed by it – only a little. So Reed and Sue's interdimensional and slash or quantum daughter, whatever flag of if 'science stuff' weirdness she was flying under, knew where he'd be, where he'd go… and she'd even left a note eerily similar to the ones he'd left cops when he first got his powers.

Maybe he just had a fan. Or… maybe she just had a vested interest in seeing what happened when you mixed a broke, lying college drop-out with spider powers with a one size fits all alien tuxedo. It really didn't matter to him because as it turned out, he was in the market for such a tux.

He left the building with one bad idea in mind, but was one that was a long time coming. He could see the Queensboro bridge from the side of the building, the pond and beyond, and made his way there.

It started to rain halfway there. DeWolff's coat kept him mostly dry by the time he reached the bridge, and by that point, with the process of running and jumping without webs being so rote to him, he started to lose himself in a trip down memory lane. The sights and sounds of the Queensboro lights and noise were so familiar that he couldn't help but flash back to an old memory, one before Battleworld, before his powers. Before anyone died.

The road into Queens was the same road the three of them, Ben, May, and him, had driven on on a hot day. They'd gotten ice cream, went for a walk in the park. Peter's had melted and fallen into his lap, and he had cried. Didn't even remember how old h'd been, now… He remembered May giving him hers, and his clothes being all sticky as they drove down the sun-scorched, dry road to home. He remembered her having color in her hair, then.

He followed that same road in the rain, and before he realized it he was back in Forest Hills, Queens. Dripping wet like a dog in the pouring rain and hopping from trees to rooftops to telephone poles and anywhere in between. That was his red carpet homecoming: rainy gutters and a black and gold street, while he was Tarzan in a sleuth's coat trying to make it to the latest premier that he had missed months ago.

There was a light fixture Ben had put up before he had died that never stopped flickering. He never the chance to fix it and Peter had always promised to, but things came up. They always did with him and so it was still there, right above the door, and Peter stalked across the road and walked up the stairs of the porch. The oil slick in the driveway from Ben's hatchback was still there too, back from when he used to work on it.

He stared at it for a long, long minute before he let himself in, twisting the lock until it broke with ease. He was getting really, really good at this breaking and entering thing.

If only they could see him now.

For the last year, anyone who would ask would be told that Peter had been 'finding out who he was' or something. Peter didn't even remember what lie he told, but he could tell it as easily as he could dodge a bullet. What he did remember was what he'd been actually doing: jungle running through alien fauna; going toe to toe with his crazies in addition to everyone else's; cozying up shoulder to shoulder with Captain America and The Hulk while Big Green held up a mountain.

He remembered wanting to come home and, ever since getting back, wanting nothing more than to leave. To take a good nap and just wake up from it all.

He took a step in and looked around silently. Anna Watson had been taking good care of the house while he was… away.

May clicked her tongue at him as his shoes settled wetly on the carpet. "Don't track all that water in here, Peter, good Lord…" she said. "Take off your shoes, and go get a towel- we raised you better than that."

Peter smiled at her. Not the smile he gave Harry, or Gwen, or anyone else. Just the one reserved for her and Ben, like he was still a 90lbs soaking wet fifteen-year-old.

Ben walked in from the kitchen, hefting a heavy hero sandwich on a plate, one half for him, and the other for Peter. He knew the look of a long day when he saw one, and Peter's counted in the hundreds. He walked up to him and clapped him the shoulder with his strong, heavy hand and said, "Let the boy roam, May," with that rough, easy voice of his that Peter remembered. "Let him roam…"

"If he roams any more he might just never come home," she said dryly, fixing the both of them a stare.

"Think I've roamed enough," he said.

"Then I think you should take a load off," Ben said. "And the shoes before Ms. Warden decides to put you in lock up."

"And you won't be getting out on good behavior either," May said.

Peter chuckled, took off his shoes and sat them by the door, and went to crumble into pieces on the couch. He didn't remember his body being so heavy, or his voice so weak, and just barely managed to look at May as she stood in front of him, arms crossed and her foot tapping with that waiting look on her face. "I'm home, Aunt May," he said, and held up his pinkie finger. "Done roaming. Pinkie-promise."

She smiled, and when she hugged him he hugged her back twice as hard. "Welcome home, Peter," she whispered.

And then he woke up.

Peter jerked awake to the sound of the rain and the tarp thrown over the couch settling loudly and wetly as his clothes dripped with rainwater. His feet bumped into his shoes, haphazardly piled on top of one another at the foot of the couch, and the dim light of the lamp next to the couch showed an empty house to corners of his sleepy eyes, with spots on the walls where picture frames used to be.

He went still, and the rain beat against the windows – the ghosts were gone, and he was alone. Of course he was…

Well, almost alone…

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the symbiote in its little thermos. He could see his reflection thanks to the light. For once he didn't look tired as he stared into a black abyss. It stared back at him, waiting and eager, and something in him felt the same way. He put his forehead to the glass.

"Well, inky," he said, "looks like it's just you and me-"

Someone knocked at the door just as was about to twist the cap off. "-Or maybe not."

Maybe it was Anna Watson? She'd done a great job looking after the place so far, and maybe she'd seen the lights on and him go inside, Maybe she had called the cops. Wouldn't that be just fun? Getting booked for breaking into his own home…

He put the suit back into DeWolff's coat with a little pat like he was hiding contraband. "Don't go anywhere," he said, and then to the door, "Door's unlocked. It's an open house."

The door creaked open. Standing in the middle of it was Valeria Richards. Peter looked her up and down for a long moment, and for that long moment she waited outside, dripping wet in the rain and wearing galoshes and an oversized rain smock with the hood up.

He grunted at her. "Your parents forget to pick you soccer practice, too?"

Her large, almost doll-like blue eyes looked around the house before landing on him with a small frown. "No," she said, sounding a little offended at the notion. "I came here by myself."

"Of course you did…" he muttered. He had a stalker. Great. Peter leaned back into the puddle of water collecting on the tarp because it was one of the best parts of his night so far. "What do you want, a medal?" he huffed.

"I'd like to come in, if at all possible," she said sharply.

"And I want to be Thor," he said, looking at her standing on the porch. The rain was starting to blow inward. Peter just picked at his ear. Still had water in it. "Sometimes we don't get what we want."

She sighed at him like he was a child and she was a very, very tired school teacher. "Mr. Parker, can I come in?"

Peter shrugged. "What's the password?"

She glared at him. "You are eighteen years old-"

"Nineteen, Little Miss Future Perfect," Peter said. "What's the password?" He enjoyed watching her hands ball up into fists. She went pink in the face – she was cute, for a weird, real life version of Schroedinger's Cat, he supposed…

When she sneezed he realized he was taking the bit too far. "Got it in one!" He said, standing up and ushering her in. "Can I take your coat, Miss? Maybe get you some hot soup and a blankie? Sippie cup? Lullaby, even?"

Valeria brushed past him with an indignant noise, took off the smock herself, and… stood on the tips of her toes to reach the coatrack by the door. Peter picked it up and held it out of reach. She snatched away from him with a hiss. "Contrary to my appearance," she hissed, trying to assume some amount of dignity as she quietly closed the door behind her, "I am not a child. Please remember that, and please don't treat me like one."

Well, so long as she was being polite… Peter nodded. "…Sorry, what were you saying?" She strangled the air in front of him. "Oh, right. You were explaining to me how the hell you knew where to find me."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small device. It was a spider-tracer. "I found it within the symbiote," she said, "and reprogrammed it to track you. I can find you anywhere now." Peter wanted to think she was lying – the signal inside the tracer dead – but he couldn't be sure. He gave her a wary look and she blinked. "That was a joke."

He crossed his arms. "Yeah, sure it was."

"The container you took has a GPS," she explained. "I followed it."

"In what, a tricycle?" She opened the door with an annoyed sigh, and pointed outside. At first he didn't notice anything. Then he looked up. "Is that the Fantasti-Car?"

"Yes and no."

He rubbed his forehead. "You carjacked your parent's flying car to come see me- this has bad news written all over it."

She walked past him with an imperious wave. "Yes, it is the Fantasti-Car. No, I did not steal it," she scoffed. "I built it. Myself."

"See, I'd believe you if it were made out of Lego," Peter said, shutting the door again.

She put her hands on her hips and sighed. "You're being very immature."

"I think therefor I am," he said dryly. "But, so are you, literally. You don't see me making a federal case about it. See, I don't want to go to jail." He paused and bit his lip to not laughed at his own joke.

Valeria actually smiled a little at that. "…Are you feeling better?"

Peter looked at the floor. Two sets of footprints stained the carpet. "Yeah," he said, still breaking out into little chuckles. "Thanks. Guess I…" he sighed. "Guess I really needed that."

He looked her over – she was wearing a black and white jumpsuit, opposed to the F4's standard blue, black and white, and instead of a 4 or a 5 there, Peter saw a chemical string there. The jumpsuit hugged her body perfectly, but something about her was wrong. The proportions were off. "I assumed you did," she said. "You were displaying all of characteristics of someone approaching a mental breakdown earlier today-"

He held up his hand. "Yeah, how about you don't psychoanalyze me right now, kid- Valeria," he corrected as she threw him a look over her shoulder. "Do your parents even know where you are?"

"Call me Val," she said, turning to face him.

"Not gonna happen."

She groaned, and looked like her mother even more like that, Peter noticed. "They know that I can protect myself, and that I'm safe. Why wouldn't I be with you?"

Peter took off DeWolff's coat off and hung it up with Valeria's smock. Then he took out the symbiote and put it on the lamp table. Her eyes followed it and looked between it him. He walked to the stairs with an aim to see if the water was still running and, if it was, to take a hot shower. "Listen, I'm a little too young for you to be my responsibility so I suggest you take a hike,"

"I'm not a responsibility- and I'm not a child!" she stomped.

"Said no child ever…" he muttered to himself, stopping in his tracks. "Okay, little Ms. Benjamin Button, what do you want?"

She looked pointedly at the symbiote and then him. "I thought you were going to reunite with it," she said.

"I was," he said. "But I was going to make a night of it. Light some candles, put on some Marvin Gaye, pour some wine. Real R-rated stuff, kids your age wouldn't understand."

"I understand more than you think," she said, and crossed her arms. "It's going to die if you don't."

"Heard you the first time, blondie. But so am I, eventually," he said, and gestured around at the house. "So is everyone. Why should I care?"

Valeria gave him that look again, like he was being observed, inspected… appraised, and her light blue eyes gleamed with intelligence that, he had to admit, he would expect from whatever devil-spawn came from Reed and Sue. And it made the hairs on his neck stand up when she smiled. "Why do you care?" she asked. He couldn't answer.

She took it upon herself to peel back the tarp over the couch and fold it, and then sat down and started to rake the water from her hair. Her suit, being as much of a scientific marvel as he could expect anything that came out of the Baxter Building to be, absorbed the water without issue or stain. All she said was, "If you need a reason, then: because it's your responsibility."

Peter followed, but didn't sit. "Well, I got a few of my own," he said, picking up and looking at the alien. He put his hand to it and it… made a hand to touch him back. Neat. "I was kind of busy here, y'know? Moping alone, wallowing in guilt, all that good stuff…"

She looked around the dark, dim walls of the house. "Yes, that sounds very… fun."

"Oh it's the best," he replied with a thin smile. "I was thinking of doing a Lion King thing here, you know. Looking up at the sky- ceiling, whatever- and summoning someone to appear in the clouds."

"Oh," she said quietly, and then after a moment asked, "Your Uncle?"

He was more surprised that she actually knew what The Lion King even was. She seemed to give him a tired look. "You know about him the same way you know about everything else?" he asked, and she nodded. "Well aren't you just full surprises?"

She shrugged her slim shoulders, and Peter saw her blonde hair rise and fall. "You don't sound very surprised, Mr. Parker."

Peter took a seat. Ben's old chair settled around him like a familiar friend, while his alien one following his finger's movements as he traced circles on the glass. "That's because I have a few of those too… Nice change of pace to be subject to someone else's, though. When they're not trying to kill me, anyway. You're not-" he started, but she cut him off.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," she said, shaking her head.

"That's not what I asked."

She blinked owlishly at him. "Would killing you be better?" she asked.

"I can take a punch. It's the hook off stage I should be worried about," he said.

"But are you?"

He shrugged. "Eh."

She leaned across the couch, just a little, and smiled. "Well I assure you, I'm not going to do either. No bad surprises, and… enough good ones to spare. Pinkie-promise," she said, and held out her pinkie. Peter looked at it, and shook it with his.

Looking like she didn't expect him to do that, she cleared her throat and pulled back. "That's a relief to hear, however. I've been told by my father that my knowledge can and will make people 'uncomfortable'. …Uncle Ben says it gives him the 'heebie jeebies' sometimes, knowing the things I know."

'Uncle Ben'… Peter shook his head. "You should probably keep a lid on it, then. Keep it to yourself," Peter said.

She tilted her head to the side as she looked at him, then. "How well has that worked out for you?"

"Ouch. Alright, Valeria: 1. Peter: 5," he said, holding up one finger on one hand, and five on the other.

She almost pouted. "Why do you get to have five?"

"Because you walked in here dressed like that. Be grateful I didn't give myself thirty. Thirty years to life."

"It… wouldn't be that much," she said, and he had to do a double take at her. She didn't notice, instead looking at herself with a frustrated noise. "It's… I couldn't find anything that fit me," she said, mostly to herself. "This body is very frustrating."

"Sucks to be you, kid," he said, and she glared at him. He laughed. "…I wasn't going to do a Mufasa for my Uncle, no. Got tired of it the first dozen times it didn't work." He fell silent, but Valeria was patient. She nodded, legs together, hands on her knees all prim and proper-like. May would like her and… Peter felt the oddest sense of déjà vu at that moment. "Then who are you here for?" she asked, leading him along.

He looked at the space between the patterns on the wallpaper as he chewed the inside of his cheek. "…My Aunt," he said.

"Oh," she said. "You talked about her a lot. Your Uncle, too."

"Did I, now?" he wondered, mostly to himself.

"You did. Frankie and I would ask you if it was possible to have two Uncle Bens and a god… Aunt."

Peter blinked. "Frankie?"

He could sense Valeria nipped at her lip. "He is- he was my brother."

"Huh," he said. "You ever try to do the Mufasa thing with him?"

She actually laughed. "I don't think he'd like that very much..."

"Well, what did I say? This- other me."

"No other you," she corrected. "Just you. Always you." She looked down. "You said… that we'd have to contact an adoption agency specifically for 'little gremlins that want to torment old people'." She smiled. "And we did, and… she was a good woman, Peter."

Peter didn't realize when she'd gotten close to him. Only that her hand was on his and that, God help him, at that moment she did seem older. Like a grown woman. Part of him wondered what the hell was her deal, but he brushed that off. After all, he did get an all-expenses paid vacation to Omega Centauri for a year. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, she was."

There was a question scratching at the inside of his frontal lobe spilled out over his tongue, and Peter needed to spit it out before it started to taste bad. It all came out as a heated and steaming pile. "So, why would I ever tell you, or your brother, any of that? I don't even talk to Reed or Sue, or Johnny or Ben about that."

Valeria framed her face with her hands as she looked at him. "I don't know. Why wouldn't you?"

"Trying to figure that out myself…" He stood up, container in hand, and Valeria knew what he was about to do. She was close to him with bated breath. Maybe he really was just some kind of guinea pig to her, a science project to see what would happen when you mixed a snarky depressive's spider-powers with an alien symbiote. And he had to admit, he was curious too.

"It has a biometric lock on it," she started to say. "Just put your thumb on the sensor at the front, and-" Peter twisted the heavy duty, hermetic lock like he was opening a bottle of pain-killers. Valeria made a noise. "That is also an option. I made that container for you myself."

Peter gave her his best apologetic look, which was a 2 out of 10 on the sorry scale. "Whoops," he said, dropped the lid, and consigned himself away to a lifetime of being a guinea pig for a weird girl with personal space issues. He upturned the canister over his hand and gave it a little shake. "Come on out, little buddy," he said. "You and me, we got a cohabitation deal to go over."

"It's female," Valeria opined. Peter looked at her. "I thought it prudent to tell you."

"Yeah," he rolled his eyes. "Would hate to get her knocked up…"

Valeria bit her lip with an eager little sigh. "Certainly… not."

Slowly, at first by drops and then by trails of tar and oil, the alien started to fall onto his hand. There was far more falling than the container could have held, and Peter's brain ran with afterthoughts. Rapid regeneration, maybe? Multiplying itself, almost like cancer- hopefully in a good way? Or maybe it was storing itself within itself, like it had with his personal items… so many things to think about. So many good distractions.

The world faded away in a river of black. Peter was swept away by warm, calm waters. They rushed over him as though he were standing in the shower, and from him every ache, every pain and itch, every annoyance and urge melted away. He was floating, first in a black abyss and then on webs. Relaxing, tossing his head back and sighing in relief for the first time in so long and feeling so, so good as she crawled up to the web, a slender, meek shadow in black and white, with a spider on her meager chest.

Peter crawled to her and sank inside, melting into her.

When he opened his eyes he was looking at the now empty container and the white eyes of his black Sunday Best were staring back. He could see clearly in the dark, and the large white spider on the black canvas of his body shone like a pearl. Just like that, he was back in the mask again. Spider-Man, again, with all of Parker's problems behind him and only God knew what else ahead. And that felt good.

"Men in Black, eat your hearts out…" he groaned, and adjusted himself like he'd just dressed for a dance. "I sure do clean up nicely, don't I?"

Valeria answered him, in a voice not quite her own. "You certainly do."

Peter turned to her, eyes half lidded. "Sorry pipsqueak, forgot you were…" his brain shut down. She was standing there, exactly where she'd been. But now she was different. As a matter of fact, that didn't quite cover it. She was different, and the last wisp of a black tendril from his symbiote was trailing from his body all the way to hers.

"I had to get 'dressed'," she said, noticing his look.

"Uh-huh." He had the dimmest feeling she was smiling, but he couldn't see her face. Not with the mask on it. Always hard to tell with those things. He was staring at her like she'd disappear if he looked away. He didn't back away, but he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to. She was taller now, not by much and still smaller than him, but taller than she should have been at her age. Taller than she had been. He gave her the up and down, inspecting her, and nothing else fit either.

"Valeria," he said, more calm than he felt. "What did you do?"

She tilted her head at him, and put her hand to his chest. "What we wanted to do."

'We', she said. Peter's head spun full of fuzz and fluff and everything dull. He felt dizzy and loose as she pressed against him, like he was getting drunk. Her legs… they were longer, thicker in the right ways, and her slim hips had widened and become curved in a way that just caught his eyes, and her waist was slim in just the right way… her breasts were just barely more than palm filling buds and suddenly all he wanted to do was… Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, the images that popped into Peter's mind made him feel ashamed. He was grabbing her, kneading them through the large, skinny white spider sitting between them as its legs ran the full length of her nubile body from her slim shoulders to her wider hips… grinding her into his lap and…

And he was finally, finally backing away, but the wall was there and he could go no further. Oh, but you can, part of him thought. You can split those walls in two, can't you?

He swallowed. The two large, expressive white eyes of Valeria's mask stared up at him, more expressive than a mask hadany right to be. But it wasn't a mask. "You have a symbiote," was all he managed to say. It sounded so simple coming from him, so dumb. With brains like that, no wonder why he flunked.

"We do," she said. "Do you like it?" she asked. Looking at herself with unnatural smoothness and ease. It was like watching a video in hundreds of frames per second. Eerie and too fluid. Was that what he looked like while he moved? He doubted it. He felt skittery, jittery, but she was so smooth. So calm. She looked so soft and comfortable, too…

"I don't-" Peter slid against the wall, toward the kitchen doorway. She didn't follow, not at first. "I don't-"

And then she looked down. Her voice trembled in excitement. "Oh, you do…"

Peter shook his head. "I don't think-" he started, but then she – they? – as in front of him, as fast and as smooth as a shadow, his shadow, and softly tugging him by his sides, slender fingers dancing against his muscles.

"Don't think," she said. "You always thought so, so much…" The eyes on her mask smiled expressively, turning into large, white crescents. Part of him wondered why. Maybe for the same reason that her body had changed: to get him to look at her. And he certainly was now. She was cute in all the right ways, more than that in all the wrong ones, and as Peter's eyes took her in again, he shuddered and grit his teeth. It unsettled him. Should have unsettled him.

Wrong, he wanted to say. But all he could say was, "Why?"

She led him around until he felt the couch behind him. She was on the tips of her toes, caressing his jaw, as she said, "For this."

Peter didn't remember falling, He didn't remember falling, or his mask melting away like ink in the rain, or her body interlocking with his and her legs dancing between his. In one second they were standing and in the same second they were on the couch and she was on him. with her hands were against the hard, corded and defined muscles of his body. Her lips nearly touching against his by the thinnest bridge of hot breath from her mouth, their bodies separated by the thinnest membrane of symbiotic flesh. And then that was gone, too.

His symbiote fell away too, just gone, and everything in him wanted to react, to surge away and buck wildly. Just not in the way he thought he should. He was tired, alone, and frustrated. Excuses. He just didn't move away, and her lips, like soft little pillows, just beckoned him closer. He swallowed, his strong hands creeping away from his control and his powerful fingers crawling around her hips like spiders. Only touching her flesh with the softest of touches, like she'd break. Like he wasn't supposed to, and her symbiote started to wick out of existence as he did, revealing the too and so soft meat beneath just waiting for him to touch and grab and maul.

They were falling, together, sinking into the couch, and her weight was on him like a dream. She was as light as a sheet and all he wanted was to drape himself with her, within her. And as she trailed those kisses all over his face, from his lips to his jaw and neck, and Peter just… crumbled. He crumbled away, feeling the last of his problems and frustrations burn away as lust fully flooded his brain with saccharine whispers and promises of pleasure, and felt the heavy slab of his cock, now free from the confines of his symbiote by a will not his own. She hovered over him, looked him in the eyes, and he felt himself meltas she sank down on top of him with the littlest, broken coo and croon and sigh of complete, utterrelief as her tongue languished in his mouth.

In the dim light of the empty house, she bounced in his lap and groaned loudly against the sound of the pouring rain, her voices two instead of one. And Peter bucked against her, gripped her close and held her there as they melted into each other.

God, he hoped she was legal…

A/N: The chapter title's a little on the nose, ain't it?