Only in Houston

Chapter 15

Seven Months ago.

After she had been released from the hospital, May had been driven home by two women, one older, and one younger. The older, May would have recognized even if she wasn't famous – Sue Storm, of the Fantastic Four. Pretty, blonde, and if Peter's entranced raving about her had been any indication, very, very smart.

Of course she would have known that her nephew was Spider-Man before May herself, did. And of course the girl in the car with her, a cute one around Peter's age with a star of David necklace around her neck, was Peter's girlfriend. Not Mary Jane, but Katherine Pryde. She looked at May as though she should know who she was, not because Peter had ever told her he'd found someone else after breaking up with Mary Jane, but because she was famous too. Or infamous. She was a mutant.

Katherine, she asked May to call her Kitty, like everyone else, pulled up a video on her phone as Sue drove them to her home. May watched the city pass by out the window, only slightly paying attention. A woman renowned for her intellect as well as her supernatural abilities, who knew her nephew, was driving her home… and she was talking to her nephew's mutant girlfriend who she hadn't known existed. She couldn't find it in her to get mad about that, considering her reaction to the last secret he'd told her about.

The video Kitty pulled up was about Spider-Man – of course it was – and the X-Men. The 'mutant terrorists'. They were in a jungle, they were being hunted, and they – Peter and Kitty – were together. If she needed any proof that anyone was her nephew's girlfriend, seeing the two of them kiss in between running for their lives from maniacs was a good start.

If Ben were still alive, May was sure he would've made an off color joke about his brother's son being the star of a slasher film – because there was a maniac with swords trying to kill him, their sweet, smart boy that had never hurt a fly. All to calm himself down, of course, because even though Peter was trapezing around in red and blue spandex on a school day, that was his nephew, and he was in danger. He needed some kind of way to vent that kind of shock. Joking.

After a night of having the dead come to her front door, a man who should have stayed dead and a girl who hadn't deserved to die, May's method of coping had been different. Peter told her, with his wide, soulful, hazel eyes, "Aunt May, I-I'm Spider-Man," as he looked down at her from the ceiling, and poor, dead Gwen Stacey looked at the both of them.

May disowned him for that. Her nephew. Her baby boy.

And then his father had come along. Richard Parker, the man who was supposed to be dead, but wasn't. Like Gwen was supposed to be dead because May and Peter had attended her funeral, had buried her next to her father. May and Ben had done the same for Richard and Mary, but there he was. After everything, there he was.

Maybe, in the heat of the moment, she had figured he could take care of Peter? Peter didn't need her. No more secrets, no more danger, no more lying. He could have his family, his blood, and May could be left with the ghosts he brought to her life.

Susan Storm told her that hadn't even been Richard. That the man had been a clone. She hadn't said of who, and didn't even need to explain that yes, clones did exist now, in a world with Nordic gods and teen boys who risked their lives for a city who hated them. For a woman who hated him.

Peter had been the spitting image of his father, and May had thought it odd that after coming back from the dead, now it was Richard that looked like Peter. And the way she had spoken to him, to them both… What an awful, awful woman she was…

"Mrs. Parker?" Sue Storm's soft voice just barely rose over the low hum of her car as it came to a stop. Hearing it, May looked at the ring on her finger before anything else. Ben would be so… disappointed in her. "We're here."

May Parker was home. It wasn't the homecoming she expected.

The house was in tip-top condition. She remembered being carried bodily out of it, chest in pain, body seizing and electric as though she'd stepped on a live wire. Peter had been screaming and there had been so many lights, so much noise… She remembered waking up later, in the hospital the next day with Anna and Mary Jane Watson at her bedside. Peter hadn't been there. The next day came and went, and the day after that, and the one after that, and still, he wasn't there. They called, and called… and he wasn't there.

The lawn was in perfect condition – too perfect even, because in between work, and work and school and being a teenaged boy, neither she nor Peter ever had the time to make it look so good. The oil slick from the driveway was gone, the chipped paint that had come with the new property was gone. Ben would have called the house a fixer upper because it looked like it could use the ol' Parker elbow grease – it was why she had bought it, after Gwen died. Now it looked pristine. May didn't like it.

They walked inside quietly. The house was empty, as expected. Anna was at work, Mary Jane at school, and Peter… was still not there. While May was in the hospital, Anna looked after the house, but said she hadn't needed to. In between whatever he was doing that kept him from his recovering Aunt's side, Peter had done everything. He washed the clothes, did the dishes, swept and cleaned. The milk in the fridge had gone bad, but no one was perfect. And wherever he had gone, instead of seeing his sickly Aunt, he'd left some money on the kitchen table behind. Impersonal, like a tenant to his landlord just before moving out.

Anna hadn't moved that money. It was still in the kitchen. A few smoothed bills. Seeing it, May almost felt like having another heart attack. She decided to make tea, instead.

"Would you like some?" she asked the two girls, reaching to the top of the cabinets for her own personal stash that had moved from their last house to this one. Peter hated tea, and she hadn't drank any since the months after Ben had passed. "I think I should have… some Earl Grey left."

She pulled down an entire glass jar of the stuff. 'Some'.

Susan politely waved her hand, looking so much like Gwen had, except older, more mature and proper. Where Gwen had been a teen rebel, Susan was a newly minted college professor. "Mrs. Parker, you don't need to-"

"I do," May said. "I do. It's only polite- it's the least I can do." She looked at Kitty and smiled. "For the two of you, you took care of him, were there for him. Please."

Kitty and Sue looked at each other, and then took seats at the table. Kitty looked moderately uncomfortable with the seat she'd chosen, and May allowed herself to smile. Of course Peter would choose a nice girl like her, and of course a girl should be uneasy with meeting her boyfriend's… aunt. Not his mother, but the closest thing he had to one, even if she had cast him away like so much regret.

"How many sugars?" May asked. She looked at the dishrack. The dust had been kept off of it because of Anna, but she rinsed three cups and then a pot for good measure.

"Two, please," Sue said.

"Four," Kitty muttered.

"Any cinnamon?"

They said no in their own little ways. May could see their reflections in the window just above the kitchen sink. There weren't any others to see, memories to think about looking through there. None of her, Ben, and Peter, or her and Peter. After moving, he had still seemed to always be on the move, never home for long. They barely ate together even, she had been working so much. She had been so proud of him, her little boy all grown up, working, getting out of his shell, making friends…

Getting shot at. Almost killed. Jumping into fires. Fighting monsters, evading arrest. Risking his life. Being the star of a movie. Missing school and saving people – pretty girl people. Ben would have been so proud of him.

Outside, another car pulled up to the house. Sue had parked in front, and it parked across the street while the space in the driveway remained empty. Sleek, black, shiny, and suspicious – May had an eye for official looking vehicles. She watched movies and, for some reason, the government saw no reason to stand apart from them.

She filled the pot with water and put it on the stove, then took another glass to rinse. The doorbell rang. "Could one of you get that, please?" she asked, not looking up.

Kitty chose to answer the door, hopping out of her chair with an awkward, jittery noise and fast walking to the door. Seconds later and May didn't hear anything. Then Sue got up.

May heard whispering next. "Where is he?"

That was something she wanted to know herself. She went to the hallway to see someone she did recognize. Nicholas Fury. The man had been on the news so much, who wouldn't know him by eyepatch alone? It said a lot about not just the women in Peter Parker's life that they glared at the Director of SHIELD, but that the Director of SHIELD stood calmly in the face of them. One of the world's most powerful people, a woman who could create invisible constructs at any size; one of the world's deadliest mutants, a girl who couldn't be held back by anyone or anything; and one of the world's most desperate mothers, who had disowned her only son.

"Mrs. Parker," Nick Fury said, hands behind his back. He nodded politely. "I have a proposition for you. All of you."

A/N: The plot thickens. Or does it? I don't know.