For as long as he can remember, Peter's known two things to be true: the Parkers are poor, and it's not a big deal. Most of the time.
Sure, there are times when it would be nice to have more money—to once in a blue moon be able to make a frivolous purchase when he's at the LEGO store with Ned instead of watching his friend toss one thing after another into their cart while Peter goes home empty-handed. It would be nice to get a healthy serving of junk food at the theater with MJ, instead of always having to ask ahead of time if he could use her bag to smuggle in some pre-bought Dollar Tree candy. And yeah, it'd be nice to feel like he fits in at prestigious Midtown High. To not always be the one student in the cafeteria who hands over a crumpled free lunch voucher instead of their parents' Amex Black Card at the cash register. To not have to put up with Flash's constant mocking about his ancient laptop and battered phone and thrift store clothes and every other monetary-related thing he gets bullied for. To come back from summer break talking about his family's monthlong getaway to an exclusive Caribbean resort like everyone else has a tendency to do.
Those things would be nice.
But as Peter reminds himself whenever his mind starts drifting too far into if-only dreams, it's all good. He has a home. A loving aunt. Enough food on the table most nights. There are plenty of people out there who have it way worse, he knows—people who'd be grateful to have even half what Peter does.
And it's not like he and May are destitute or anything. Things just get a bit tight sometimes. A lot of the time.
Most of the time.
But he doesn't mind. Really. It's all good.
Until, one day, it isn't.
The apartment is quiet when Peter crawls through his bedroom window and slides it shut with his foot, dark except for the faint dusting of gold that streams through his ajar door. He pauses, and after a moment of straining his ears latches onto it: the soft pulsing of May's heart in the other room. Shuffling. Her heartbeat again.
He drops from the ceiling, lands on his feet with a quiet thump, and makes his way out, working the mask off as he goes.
"May!" he calls from behind the bunched fabric. "I'm—"
He freezes the second his mask clears his vision.
May's sitting at the kitchen table, illuminated by the stove light, glasses perched on top of her head. She hadn't heard him come in apparently, because she's just started frantically wiping the tear marks from her cheeks with one hand, sweeping up the papers spread across the table with her other. Even in the dimness, Peter can tell her eyes are bloodshot.
"May?" He closes the distance between them with hesitant steps, coming to a standstill next to the kitchen half-wall.
She looks up at him with a forced smile, but he doesn't meet her gaze, too busy tracking her hands as they finish gathering the papers (bills, he realizes. It's always bills) and moving them to her lap.
"Hey," she says in what he thinks is supposed to be a cheerful tone. It mostly just sounds anxious. "How was patrol? You catch any bad guys, Spider-Man?"
Peter doesn't even pretend to fall for the charade. "What's wrong?"
Her lips waver a little before she hoists them back into place. "Nothing you need to worry about."
"May," he says, hands tightening around the mask.
"Did you have a good day at school? Did you get your chemistry tes—"
"May," he says again, a hint of fear beginning to creep into his voice. Worst-case scenarios are already running like a freight train through his mind, because when you're Peter Parker, the worst-case scenarios are usually the ones to come true. May's got a history of cervical cancer in her family, he knows. He scrambles to remember if she's mentioned anything about a doctor's appointment lately, but between her long hours and his school and internship and Spider-Man, they rarely have time to coordinate schedules these days. "Please. Tell me."
At his high-pitched, tight plea, May's smile falls. Her shoulders droop, collarbones jutting out beneath her loose shirt as she leans forward and rests both elbows on the table, propping her forehead in both palms.
"The hospital's doing cutbacks," she says, inflectionless. "I got laid off."
It takes a couple seconds for the information to sink in.
As soon as it does, Peter's stomach clenches like it's been dunked in melted metal and left to harden.
It's not cancer, he hurries to remind himself in an effort to stave off the impending panic. May's okay. He's not going to lose her, too. It's not worst-case. It's not even the first time she's lost her job because to budget cuts.
But they'd had Ben then. They'd had Ben because Peter hadn't gone and gotten his uncle murdered yet.
Your fault, his mind says, as if he could ever forget. This is all your fault.
May looks up at his silence. When she sees his expression, she straightens and quickly backtracks. "This really isn't anything you need to be worried about though, okay? There are a million hospitals in New York and never enough staff to fill them. I'll have another job lined up by the end of the week, guaranteed."
The reassurance doesn't even remotely appease him. He already knows he's not going to get any sleep tonight, too busy tossing and turning and worrying about the floodgate of terrifying possibilities that have just been opened.
(What if she doesn't find a job? What if they can't afford their utilities? The rent? What if they lose the apartment—the apartment he grew up in, that they lived in with Ben, their home? What if—)
But May's got such utter earnestness in her eyes that he can't bring himself to argue.
"Yeah," he says instead. He swallows. He needs to get out. He can't do this.
May's watching him. "Peter—"
"I'm gonna go call Mr. Stark," he breaks in, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. A little weakly, he adds, "Curfew check-in."
She raises her lips into a much smaller smile than before. He's not able to tell if this one's genuine or not. "Sounds good."
He doesn't, in the end, call Mr. Stark.
He tells himself it's because the man is currently traveling—on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, last Peter checked—and probably doesn't have great reception. Even as he thinks it though, he knows it's a laughable excuse: Tony Stark and bad reception are about as plausible together as oil and water.
There's only one reason he doesn't want to talk to Mr. Stark right now ("We really need to work on your acting skills, kid. You're a worse liar than Pinocchio. This is just insulting."), but Peter's not ready to say it.
He's not ready to talk.
Instead, with unsteady hands, he types out a simple text that's bare-boned enough, he hopes, to pass for fatigue.
home safe. stop worrying. kinda tired so im going 2 bed early. call u tmrw? He rereads it twice before sending it off.
He's barely set his phone back down on his desk before it chimes several times in rapid succession.
The amount I worry about you is exactly proportionate to the amount you don't worry about yourself, Crocket.
Give yourself a goodnight smooch for me.
And you better call. I'll show up at school and embarrass you in front of all your friends if you don't.
Despite himself—despite the worry running roughshod over him, the fear of whatever fucked up thing the universe will decide to throw at him next as it always, inevitably does—Peter's erratic pulse eases a miniscule amount.
Yeah, he thinks. Love you too.
Then he sends a meme featuring a terror-stricken cat.
He figures they can both read between the lines.
Peter lies awake in bed that night and thinks of Uncle Ben.
Twenty in cash. Thirty four cents change. A MetroCard. Three credit cards and a maxed out debit. Two expired coupons for a deli a few blocks from their apartment. A picture of Peter and May. A faux leather wallet that was falling apart at the seams.
That's the sum total of everything Ben died for trying to protect Peter.
The mugger didn't even grab his wallet before running.
Peter laughs at all the right times when he talks to Mr. Stark on his way to school the next morning. He asks how the flight to Dubai was, what time it is in the UAE, how Miss Potts is holding up after being forced to spend fourteen hours trapped in a cabin with the man, if they'd met the investors they were supposed to be sealing their giant Stark Industries deal with yet. He dutifully relays everything that happened at school the day prior, leaving out the part where Flash chucked a dodgeball at his face despite them being on the same team, not giving Peter enough time to swerve without it looking suspicious. He talks about the pictures Betty showed of her cousin's wedding, MJ's refusal to take part in their biology class' frog dissection because it's unethical and anthropocentric and promotes a system of unnecessary cruelty and some other stuff he didn't catch, how Abe had to sprint to the nurse's office when Mr. Harrington fainted ten seconds into his demonstration.
He tries to sound normal. He doesn't mention anything about May.
By the time the arrival screen in his bus declares Peter's stop is next, he's grown more confident in his acting abilities. Maybe gallivanting around as a clandestine vigilante has made him a better liar than he once was.
The optimism is immediately snuffed when he steps off the bus and starts to walk the last couple blocks.
"Hey, I gotta go. I'm almost at school," he's saying, phone pressed tight to his ear so he can hear over the passing traffic. "But I hope you and Miss Potts—"
"Whoa whoa whoa. Pump your brakes there, Andretti," Mr. Stark cuts in.
Peter's even stride falters before he comes to a full stop.
A briefcase-toting, business-casual woman bumps into him. She shoots him a glare as she passes.
He mumbles an apology and moves beneath the canopy of a closed bar and grill. "Yeah?"
Several silent seconds go by. "Just… Everything okay, kid? You sound off."
Peter wipes the palm of his free hand on his jeans and replays their conversation in his mind, trying to pinpoint anything that might've been a tell—any phrases he'd used, any waver in speech. He comes up empty. "Yeah. I'm fine." Then, because it seems like another normal Peter Parker thing to say, "Are you okay?"
Mr. Stark huffs in the way he does whenever he's trying to smother his laughter. "Yeah. All good here." He sobers a little. "I know you said you could hold down the fort."
"I can hold down the fort."
Mr. Stark ignores him. "But if all turns out to be not so quiet on the Western Front—"
"That's not even what that book—"
"—then I want you to get your ass on the phone and call me, capisce? I brought a suit. I can make it home in three."
"Why can't you or May ever trust me to take care of myself?" Peter whines, every preoccupation with jobs and rent and money shoved to the backburner by the annoyance that always flares when Mr. Stark treats him like a little kid.
"Don't flatter yourself, Parker." Mr. Stark's adopted his media persona—the one where he pretends to be arrogant and egotistical and uncaring and everything else he's not.
(Peter secretly refers to this persona as Phony Tony, though he doesn't think Real Tony would much approve of the name were he to learn of its existence.)
"You think I enjoy babysitting duty?" Phony Tony continues. "Sometimes I turn off all the lights and pretend I'm not home when you trapeze by just so I can have a few seconds to myself. It would actually be a pretty massive relief if you got snatched off the street and eaten alive by a gang of Jersey cannibals. Think of the peace…" He trails off, pretending to fantasize about Peter's gruesome death for a moment before saying, "I just need an excuse to get out of all the meetings Pep's about to force me to endure. Two weeks of this garbage, geez. Even putting up with you would be a step up."
Whatever solace Peter gained from their conversation withers at the reminder. Two and a half weeks, he corrects. Four days make all the difference in the world.
"Yeah," he says aloud, too busy being despondent about the prospect of not seeing Mr. Stark for an entire half month to really be bothered when some of the misery seeps into his voice.
There's a pause on the other end of the line. "Hey," Mr. Stark (the real one this time) says. "You sure nothing's—"
"I really have to go," Peter says, pushing off from the gated bar door he'd been leaning against. "Otherwise I'm gonna be late."
Another, longer pause. "Sure, kid. I'll talk to you tonight, okay?"
"Kay." For all Peter's reluctance to call in the first place, it takes more effort than he expects to hang up.
When May tells him she's dropped their cable package four days into her so-far futile job search, Peter's not at all surprised. Cable's always the first to go whenever she's unsure if she'll be able to make next month's rent.
"It's just for a while," she promises. "A month tops."
He plasters on a smile and pretends to believe her.
May's made a habit of throwing away grocery receipts before Peter has a chance to see them, but he's not stupid: he knows how much she spends on food, and he knows how much that's because of him.
So he does the one thing he can think of to help.
It doesn't take long after he starts cutting back for him to lose weight.
He doesn't cut back a lot. Not enough for May to notice, much less worry about. He just starts to eat like a normal person for once: three meals a day, two thousand calories, plus whatever street vendor food women (it's always women, and usually octogenarian ones) sometimes buy Spidey when he gives them directions or offers to walk them home or carries their groceries from their car to their front door. But his metabolism is risible enough that it seems like only a matter of hours before the outline of his ribs begins to define itself, a faint ladder of ridges running up and down each side.
Compounding matters is the fact that Mr. Stark and Miss Potts aren't scheduled to be back for another eleven days still. Whatever food Peter would normally be getting during their time together is gone alongside them.
He's considered, briefly, going to the penthouse on his own to raid the kitchen. FRIDAY always lets him in, and Mr. Stark's reassured him ad nauseum that he's welcome over even when neither of them are there. Peter's taken advantage of the offer a couple times in the past—both last resorts resulting from sensory overloads and an urgent need to be in the soundproofed sanctuary that was his penthouse bedroom.
The idea's quickly nixed, though: he doesn't want to risk Mr. Stark finding out, and while FRIDAY always lets him in, she also always tattles.
The weight loss isn't even really a problem. Both hiding it from others and staving off the constant cold it produces can be dually accomplished by throwing on a hoodie or adding a couple tank tops beneath the already-heated suit for extra padding.
The much bigger issue is the hunger. As mild as it mostly is, and as much as he tries to distract himself, the only time Peter ever forgets about it is when he's either fighting someone or saving someone (or, most often, both) during patrol. Otherwise, the gnawing sensation in his stomach is always on the backburner of his mind. It makes focusing during school a lot harder; Ned's had to nudge him back into alertness more than once.
"Dude," his friend whispers during physics on day eight, jabbing an elbow into Peter's arm for the fourth time in as many minutes. He leans closer as soon as Mrs. Warren turns to face the whiteboard. "What is with you today?"
"Sorry," Peter whispers back. He tries to rub the grittiness from eyes. "I just got a headache."
Ned perks up. "Is it because of something happened to… You know. The other guy?"
Peter sighs at the very obvious, attention-drawing emphasis his friend puts on the last words. "No, Ned."
"Did you have an epic battle and get a concussion?"
"No."
"Was there another mission? Did one of the Avengers drop a jet bridge on you again?"
"No."
"Did you run out of web and fall twenty stories and land on the concrete and almost die?"
"No."
"Is there more alien stuff? Can—"
"Ned," Peter hisses. "Would you—"
"Peter?"
His head snaps to the front of the room where Mrs. Warren is standing with her arms crossed, brow raised as she stares him down. His face goes red when he notices the twenty other people staring at him along with her. Flash's smirk is punchably smug.
"Since you feel confident you have a firm enough grasp on today's lesson that you don't need to pay attention, perhaps you'd like to tell the rest of us how to calculate for average acceleration."
Peter's gaze flicks to the board. It should be easy. He knows this stuff. Mr. Stark's been walking him through college-level physics equations for ages. But his mind feels hazy, the world blurry and incoherent around him, and trying to decipher Mrs. Warren's handwriting is like trying to read Mandarin Chinese.
He can't focus. The only thing he can focus on is the cavernous ache in his stomach.
Mrs. Warren's frowning at him. So is Ned.
Flash's smirk grows.
"Pay attention, please," she says, finally looking away. "Anyone want to help Peter out?"
It's fine, he tells himself, ignoring Ned's lingering gaze. Hunger isn't anything new.
He's dealt with it before. He can deal with it again.
Another week goes by, and every day May doesn't hear back about any of her applications is another weight stacked on Peter's shoulders. It's at its heaviest when he's on his way to and from school, passing sign after sign taped in every window and door in Forest Hills, each one advertising some variation of Now Hiring, Apply Inside. May's officially done with her old job now, and all he can ever think about besides his own constant hunger is how he should be looking for a job, too. He's fifteen. Lots of fifteen year olds work to help support their families. But each attempt to bring it up to May has ended in a virtual shouting match.
"You're a kid, Peter," she said with unmistakable finality during last night's dinner after another round of heated argument. "You have more than enough on your plate as is. You're not adding another thing on top of it all."
He doesn't have enough on his plate, he thinks bitterly as he locks the apartment door behind him on the morning of day fifteen. That's the problem.
Peter's been feeling bitter a lot. He hasn't been sleeping well—no matter how earlier he goes to bed, he always ends up lying awake for hours, thinking about Ben and money and every other bad thing that can be traced back to him—and the exhaustion, combined with lack of food, is starting to wear on him. He catches himself clenching his jaw at random times, slamming doors shut with more force than is really necessary.
May's dismissal last night hadn't helped.
He grits his teeth and glares down at the sidewalk for the rest of his walk to school.
"Is everything okay, dude?" Ned asks once he gets there. Peter glances back from where he's opening his locker to find Ned watching him with a concerned expression. "You've seemed kind of off lately."
"Fine." He immediately feels bad for the terse answer; Ned's just trying to help. Peter shakes his head. "Sorry. Sorry. I…" He fumbles for something plausible, and says the first thing that jumps to mind. "I just miss Mr. Stark, I guess."
It's not a lie. Although actively thinking about the man's absence only ever intensifies it, it's the other thing he knows has been setting him on edge. He can't pin down when exactly it happened, but Mr. Stark's become synonymous with safety to him. Mr. Stark means protection. Mr. Stark means Peter can rest without worrying the entire world will crumble beneath him while he sleeps.
This is the longest they've been apart since becoming…whatever it is they are. The business trip couldn't have come at a worse time.
He's just tired. He feels like a wrung out rag. Soon there's going to be nothing left of him but threads.
Ned looks sympathetic. "Sorry, dude. I know you guys are pretty tight now."
Peter gives a halfhearted shrug and turns back to his locker.
"He's supposed to be home in a few days though, right? I thought you said this weekend."
"Saturday night." 58 hours, he adds mentally as he gathers his books, not caring how obsessive it sounds even to him.
43 hours he thinks as he crawls through his window after patrol.
He finds May splayed out on the sofa, neck leant crooked against the armrest. Careful not to wake her, he props a pillow beneath her shoulders, drapes the throw blanket across her body and heads to bed, snatching a couple granola bars from the kitchen on his way.
39 hours he thinks, staring at the glowing numbers of his alarm clock. Another sixty seconds tick past (38 hours 59 minutes) before he rolls over and grabs his phone off the stack of storage drawers next to his bed. When he unlocks it, the screen is still open on the text conversation he'd been having with Mr. Stark just a few hours prior. He stares at the last one the man sent.
Sweet dreams, kid. I'd say something derogatory about bed bugs, but seeing as they're close cousins of yours…
Peter taps the new message box. I miss you, he types without thought.
He stares at that too. After a moment, he deletes it and turns off the screen, plunged once more into darkness.
34 hours he thinks right before something lands on his shoulder.
"Join me," comes Ned's deep, raspy voice from behind him, "and together we shall build my new LEGO X-wing Fighter."
Peter looks at the plastic stormtrooper, trying to feign convincing enthusiasm when he says, a beat too late, "That's awesome, dude."
It's not. The mention of a new set, a new thing that Ned gets to just have without a second thought because his parents are loaded and can afford to buy him stuff like that, sends a sharp pang of jealousy stabbing through his gut. But Peter feels like a horrible friend for being jealous in the first place. It's not like Ned can help being rich—no more than Peter can help being poor.
"How many pieces?" he asks, not really wanting to hear the answer but not knowing what else to say.
The first period bell, to Peter's relief, cuts Ned off.
26 hours he's thinking when, halfway through Decathlon, his phone vibrates against his thigh. He slips it out of his jeans' pocket and glances down.
And immediately breaks into his first wide, genuine smile in what seems like a year.
Knock knock. Ditch the dorks, kid, I'm busting you out. Aunt Hottie says okay.
Everyone's eyes are on him when he looks up, but the smile doesn't diminish in the least at their attention.
"Sorry," he tells MJ, already shooting out of his seat and shouldering his backpack. "I gotta go. I gotta…a thing. Um. Just remembered."
Everyone except her looks exceedingly curious. She just looks bored. "Whatever, loser. Have fun with your mystery thing, I guess."
He spares Ned a single, rushed wave as he books it out.
"No running!" he hears Mr. Harrington call after him. "I don't want anyone to break their necks because of a wet floor! Not again…" It's only because of Peter's enhanced hearing that he catches the last part.
An orange Lamborghini is waiting by the curb when he bursts through the front doors—exactly where Mr. Stark always waits for him.
This, by far, has been the most surreal part of everything that's resulted from Peter's spider bite. People like Peter Parker just don't hang out with people from the stratospheric upper echelons, much less Tony Stark, much less Peter's personal hero since, like, forever. But somehow, in some crazy stroke of luck that is the wildcard of Peter's life, it happened. One day, he'd gotten home to discover probably the most famous, most powerful, richest man in the world sitting on his sofa, flirting with his aunt and going on about some grant thing while choking back walnut date loaf that Peter knows from experience tastes like soggy wood chips.
Germany happened. Then everything with Mr. Toomes happened too, and something shifted in their until-then very distant relationship.
They'd started talking. They'd gotten closer. Peter started spending most weekends up at the Compound. And then something shifted even more when Mr. Stark invited him to spend one weekend at his personal penthouse instead.
A year later, and 'one weekend' has turned out to be a lot more than just one.
It's utterly, unconditionally, incomprehensibly bizarre—and was made all the more baffling when Mr. Stark started picking Peter up himself after Friday Decathlons.
"Wouldn't it make more sense to have Happy come get me?" he'd asked during that first drive into Manhattan. "You know. For the 'internship'?"
Mr. Stark glanced at him in time to catch the air quotes. He raised an amused brow. "We're alone, kid. You don't need to whisper."
"Right, yeah." Peter coughed once into his fist, awkwardly clearing his throat. In a deeper, hopefully more mature-sounding tone, he added, "Or I could take the subway on my own."
"Gotta admit, I'm a little hurt," Mr. Stark said, not looking away from the road. "I know Pep says I can be a lot, but is my company really that unbearable you'd rather spend an hour fighting off hobos in some rat-infested, urine-stained, gum-encrusted train?"
"It's just that everyone at Decathlon keeps asking about it," Peter rushed to explain. He didn't mean to hurt Mr. Stark's feelings. "Because you're, like, super famous and important and Stark Industries' main owner and everything? And I'm just…you know. Nobody."
Mr. Stark pursed his lips. "Well. You're obviously somebody, or I wouldn't be bothering with you in the first place, would I?" He continued on before Peter could argue. "And you can tell that dweeby bunch of nerds that I'm an eccentric billionaire and can therefore do whatever the hell I want. I like driving. It's relaxing. I like getting away from those morons Pepper forces me to interact with even more. If I want to spend a couple hours to myself every week picking up an intern I've just so happened to take a shine to, then that's my business."
The Led Zeppelin suddenly reverberating through the car was a not imperceptible sign the conversation was over.
When Peter asked Col. Rhodes about it on their daytrip to the Compound that same weekend, the man had just snorted. "'Eccentric billionaire' my ass. You know what this is? He likes playing house. He's going to start packing you lunches and drawing hearts on the napkins next."
All the answer did was throw him even further out of whatever loop Mr. Stark and Col. Rhodes were in together. Peter's since resigned himself to permanent confusion.
He makes it down the school's steps and flings open the Lamborghini's passenger door in record time, nearly breaking it from its hinges as he does.
"Hey, kid," Mr. Stark says when Peter ducks inside. His signature nonchalant façade is cracking beneath the force of the smile he's trying to tamp down. "How was practice?"
Peter, in response, launches himself into the man's arms.
Hugs with Mr. Stark are very rare things (they usually only happen after life or death situations, those usually resulting from something reckless Peter's done, Peter's life usually being the one in danger), and this one's made especially awkward by Mr. Stark's seatbelt and the backpack Peter has yet to take off and the console wedged between them—the latter of which is digging hard into Peter's belly.
It doesn't matter. After the past few miserable weeks, it still feels equivalent to coming back from the brink of drowning. It feels like he can finally breathe.
Mr. Stark means protection. The bad stuff can't touch Peter as long as he's close by.
"Alright, party's over, boss's back," Mr. Stark says next to his ear. "And by boss I mean Pepper. She's always been the anti-fun one of us."
The offhand, self-assured flippancy is like a balm on whatever raw wound Peter's become. His eyes close of their own volition as he sinks his full weight against the man, and he takes several long seconds to just be there and breathe because he can finally do that again. Mr. Stark's wearing the cologne he seems to prefer, judging by how often he has it on, and the spiciness sort of burns Peter's nostrils. But the familiarity is ample reason not to move.
"You're home early," he mumbles into Mr. Stark's shoulder.
"Got business wrapped up sooner than expected. Figured I'd come surprise you," Mr. Stark says. "I know spending any length of time away from me is a massive act of endurance, so..."
Despite the obvious joke, the unspoken invitation for him to snark back, Peter—whose wrung-rag body is little more than tatters now, who's been counting down hours like a lunatic, who hasn't felt this bereaved and exhausted and broken since Ben—can't find anything funny about the statement. Slowly, his euphoria starts to dissipate.
A stray, stupid, nonsensical question drifts to the forefront of his mind. Where does my happiness go when it leaves?
He doesn't even know where it comes from. But it immediately makes him think of two other things: that one Langston Hughes poem about a dream deferred, and Ben's warmth evaporating from his limp body no matter how tightly Peter held him and begged for it not to go.
And suddenly the euphoria isn't so much dissipating as gushing like blood from a severed artery. Except there's no wound to press down on, because Peter, all of him, is the wound. He wouldn't even know where to start.
"Quite frankly," Mr. Stark says when Peter doesn't take the conversational bait, "I'm not sure what Pep and Happy and Rhodey and the rest of the Peanuts roundup are always complaining about. I'm a delightful human being." He rubs a hand up and down Peter's arm—what he can reach of it, anyway, his own arm half-draped across Peter's backpack—a clear indication that the hug, alongside all the fun Peter's apparently been having in his absence, is over.
Peter doesn't let go. To his horror, tears are welling up behind his squeezed eyelids.
Stupid, he berates himself, furious that he'd have the audacity to keep it together for weeks only to have a meltdown the moment it actually matters. Stop being stupid.
"Pete?" Mr. Stark asks, the levity still there but starting to be undercut by worry. "Don't tell me you're that sad I'm back, huh? Here I brought you souvenirs and everything."
Peter's breath hitches.
"Hey," Mr. Stark says, quieter. He rubs his hand down Peter's arm again, but this one's the soothing kind instead of the let go kind. "Come on. What's wrong, bud?"
Everything, Peter wants to say. Nothing. He doesn't know.
Peter swallows. Hard. Then, his clogged voice muffled against Mr. Stark's shirt collar, he settles on a simple, "I really missed you."
"Yeah," Mr. Stark says, pressing him closer. "I really missed you too."
Neither of them need to say anything else.
They can read between the lines.
"You look happy."
Peter glances over his shoulder to find MJ sitting on the bleacher row right behind him and Ned, scrutinizing Peter over the top of a very heavy-looking tome. This morning, like most Monday mornings, Coach Wilson has trolleyed the CRT TV out onto the gym floor and is making them watch another video of a uniform-clad Captain America monologuing his scripted PSA. Today's is about the importance of hygiene.
"You may think my most valuable weapon is my shield," Cap's saying when Peter faces forward again, taking a moment to let MJ's observation soak in. "But do you know what weapon is even more valuable to me than that?" Cap pauses for effect, then lifts a small ivory square into the frame. His smile looks a little pained. "Soap."
I'm happy, he tells himself, testing how it sounds before realizing it's true: a weekend of solid food and sleep, never mind Mr. Stark's constant, reassuring presence, have done the equivalent of lifting a ten ton cinderblock from Peter's back.
There were, thankfully, no more breakdowns after their hug ended. Even more thankfully, Mr. Stark hadn't pushed him for answers. Instead, the man kept his eyes fixed on the road when he pulled away from the curb and rummaged through the center compartment for a pack of Kleenex, tossing them onto Peter's pretzel-legged lap with an unminced, "Get your disgusting shoes off my baby's seat."
Mr. Stark feigned indignation when Peter just shucked them off, threw them to the floor and went back to crisscrossing his legs. The rant he launched into about the awfulness of teenagers lasted most of their drive, even managing to coax a few small laughs from Peter with the deliberate élan of it all.
They passed the rest of their weekend in blissful nonproductivity, lounging around the penthouse watching movies and tinkering in the lab and talking (with some major omissions on Peter's end) about anything they'd missed in their steady stream of texts and calls.
Well. Mr. Stark did most of the talking. Peter mostly gorged himself on what must have been a quarter of the food in Lower Manhattan, struggling to keep up with the increasingly bizarre stories about Dubai being thrown his way. By the time Mr. Stark got to the one that was about either a model and a gazelle or a model named Giselle, Peter gave up altogether, content to let the man's voice wash over him while he ate.
"Take it from a guy who lived in the '40s," Cap says. "Rationing may not always be fun, but it can be a vital part of being a good citizen. And as my good friend, your gym teacher—"
Cap gestures to the left of the screen. Coach Wilson, standing to the right, waves.
"—has already told you, one of the most important things to ration…" He takes another dramatic pause before brandishing a stick of deodorant. "Is body odor."
Wherever his happiness went, Peter reflects, it came back.
He turns back to MJ and whispers, "I am happy," meaning every word.
The Netflix account and Wi-Fi are next to go after the cable. May tells him about both when he gets home from patrol that night.
"It's no big deal, May," he says, brushing aside her endless torrent of apologies. "I'll just do my homework and stuff at the library."
Lots of people, he reminds himself once he's in the privacy of his bedroom, breath shuddering as he closes his eyes and leans against the closed door, have it way worse. This is nothing.
It's nothing.
(Of course, when you're Peter Parker, happiness is a fickle thing. It never stays long.)
Another eight days pass before May finally, finally lands a gig at an ER in Elmhurst. It's not quite the replacement they'd been hoping for—about twice the work for half the pay—but it's fulltime, and between their looming rent and dwindling funds, she doesn't hesitate. Even with the new job though, their financial situation doesn't so much improve as stops plummeting so rapidly towards disaster.
Between the long hours on her feet and their overdue bills, Peter can tell everything's taking a toll on May. The dark half-moon bruises underscoring her eyes are proof enough of that. And while he does his best to shift some of the weight from her shoulders, keeping the apartment clean and having meals (Hamburger Helper sans the meat, most nights) waiting for her when she gets home, what he really needs is a job. But May, of course, has already made her stance on that matter clear.
The entire situation makes Peter feel crushingly alone. Even more than a job, what he needs is someone to talk to, but his list has been gridlocked at zero. May's out; aside from her not budging on the issue of his potential employment, he doesn't want her to know how much things are affecting him, too. There's nothing she can do about it, and confiding in her would only be another unnecessary burden. He could try talking to Ned. But as good a friend as he is, Ned's gone his entire life without ever once having to worry about money. He just wouldn't be able to see things from Peter's point of view.
MJ would probably lecture him about how America's unsustainable capitalist system has resulted in a nationwide income inequality that will soon collapse into unsalvageable economic depression before handing him a pamphlet for an upcoming march on Wall Street and walking away.
The only other person he has is Mr. Stark.
He toys with the idea while he's sitting at his usual desk in the library one night, trying and failing to concentrate on the essay he should be writing for English. Mr. Stark would listen. He always helps Peter with stuff.
But he also heads and bankrolls the Stark Relief Foundation, and donates a Scrooge-McDuck-worth amount of money to nonprofits and good causes and a bunch of other stuff on top of that. The thought of him ever seeing Peter like that—like one of his projects, a charity case, a problem to be fixed…
That's not how Mr. Stark sees me already. Is it?
He shoves the question away as soon as it comes, angry at himself for thinking stupid things again. It's still there though—still lingering in the background (Is it? Why wouldn't he see you that way?)—so Peter tries to distract himself by shifting to the other, more achievable question that appears. Before he has time to hesitate, he minimizes the blank Word doc and switches over to a browser.
How rich is Tony Stark? he types into Google's search bar. An answer pops up at the top of the screen a second later.
The blood drains from Peter's face. He slams the laptop shut.
No, he thinks, suddenly a little worried he might throw up.
On an increasingly frequent basis, he feels like Mr. Stark gets him more than anyone else in the world. Mr. Stark gets how Peter's mind works, gets the secrets and lies and guilt, gets the burden being a hero entails. He gets that responsibility isn't a choice. They both just know.
But this? This is something he'll never be able to understand. Mr. Stark's not an option.
Peter's loneliness increases tenfold.
With no one else to turn to, he ends up going to the cemetery where Ben and his parents are buried beside one other in a far back corner, close to a hunched oak tree that looks like it's seen better days—something that resonates with him. His mom and dad take left flank, marked by a joint granite headstone inscribed with Loving Parents and a Hebrew inscription whose meaning Peter can never remember, though May has it written down somewhere. Ben's on the right, his Beloved Husband, Brother & Uncle and simple Star of David pushed to one side of his stone; May's name and a rose-entwined cross preemptively occupy the other half. This is consequently the half Peter always does his best to avoid looking at.
May only has her date of birth etched. On all three others, the gaps between birth and death are far too short.
Peter gives a small wave as he nears them. "Hi guys," he says quietly, stuffing his hand back into his jacket pocket. "Sorry I haven't visited in a while. Things have been kind of busy."
He comes to a stop in front of them. Stands there a minute. Goes to brush the dirt and pollen that's collected on their headstones. Then he sits down in the grass between them, ignoring the dampness that immediately soaks into his jeans.
Visits here have taken on a different aura ever since Ben died. To his simultaneous sorrow and relief, Peter doesn't remember much about his parents. He still misses them, still cries for them from time to time, still clings to the few memories he does have. But with them, his grief is muted. With Ben, it's urgent and raw, and seeing his grave just inflates it to the verge of rupture.
He knows his absence hasn't only been because of the busyness. He's too ashamed to say this though.
Instead, he tells them about school, and Spider-Man, and Decathlon, and MJ and Ned and Mr. Stark and, when he can't avoid it any longer, May.
"And now I don't know what to do," he confides, once they've been caught up on the past month's events. "I gotta help, you know? I gotta take care of her, because—" His voice breaks. Tears have started to blur his vision. He swipes at them and blinks hard several times before trying again. "Because you're not here to do it anymore, Ben, and that's…that's my fault. And she wouldn't even have a problem in the first place if it wasn't for needing to support me. But she won't let me get a job, and I can't tell Mr. Stark, and I… I just wanted a grownup to talk to, I guess."
The admission is unexpected even by him, but he recognizes the honesty of it now that it's hanging in the air. For all Peter can snatch speeding cars or stop muggers mid-robbery, this is something entirely different. This is quite literally beyond his paygrade. And even though he feels like a little kid for thinking it, it's the truth: he just wants someone more capable than him to tell him everything will be okay.
There's a long pause. Peter clears his throat. "So if you guys have any ideas… Um. And you're not too mad at me, Ben, even though I don't blame you if you are. And you could somehow find a way to let me know what to do. Yeah. I…I could really use your help."
It's not like he's expecting anything to come from it. So there's no reason to be disappointed when nothing ever does.
i really am sorry, uncle ben, he texts Ben's old number, desperately needing to say it again but too much of a coward to face his uncle's grave in person. im sorry for everything. it shouldve been me.
He sends it into the void, hoping Ben will somehow see it. The screen goes black. The bedroom goes black with it. Peter digs the heels of his palms into his closed eyes.
When he wakes up the next morning, a single notification is waiting for him: wrong number, sorry. hope things work out with your uncle!
It's the only message he gets.