Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Recreating Home

a/n: Spooktober? More like Peter getting into trouble on a daily basis. More like bore ragnarok. I don't edit my chapters please h-

Spooktober 14: Sliced

May Parker was practiced in the art of recreating the meaning of home. When a little kid sat on her husband's couch, chestnut curls ruffled around his head and big brown eyes, chubby cheeks that were wet with tears as he heard the dreadful news—She did her best.

She didn't know what they would do, the three of them. But Ben took her by the arm and gave her that look that he always used to give, the one that she envied for its comfort, the one she dreamt of on weary nights when she was stressed. A look that said; "This will be difficult. But we can get through it, and we will get through it, and it will all be okay."

He gave her that look, and said, "Trust me." So she did.

May and Ben took in the (newly orphaned) Peter Parker and set him up in the guest room. Ben slept on the floor, woke up with a sore back, and continued to do it for the next two weeks afterwards. In the mornings, May made the only thing she knew how to make, a wheatcakes recipe that was also Ben's favourite, and the two of them made a home for the little boy who had lost everything he had.

The boy grew up in their nurturing arms, and May had taken to raising him as if he were her own. Her and Ben wore smiles of pride every time Peter would come home with his report card, or rattle off some new science thing he learned online that May knew only her brother-in-law would have understood.

One time, he walked in holding an armful of dirty old radio parts and set them on the table, and May was about to scold him until she saw the brightness in his eyes. He sat down at the table with such joy before he started fiddling, tinkering, doing whatever Peter did, and May just watched on in awe until Ben had come home with dinner.

She never planned to have kids, and sometimes she would have doubts, thoughts of worry that she wasn't doing enough. On nights such as that, where Peter would pout and storm off into his room, where every bone in her body was tired and she would look at Ben helplessly, and Ben would squeeze her hand.

"You're doing good," Ben would say, giving her the signature look. Kind eyes, smile lines. Patience, because he was always patient beyond any other being May had ever met. "We're doing our best. Peter can see it, too."

Peter was thirteen, when May had to recreate their home together for the second time, and not the last. Peter had stormed off, he had been acting strange all week and both of them were so worried for their boy. The door slammed behind him, the old thing splintered off its hinges. Ben and May exchanged a worried look.

"I'll go check on him," Ben promised.

May nodded. "I'll wait up for you too. It's late, Peter shouldn't be out in the dark."

Ben disappeared out of the doorway. He never stepped back into their quaint little apartment. In his place, Peter stumbled in with police officers, and blood-stained hands, and an expression that she hadn't seen since he first arrived. Something was so lost in his eyes, as if innocence had been ripped away and crushed in his view, and as the innocence fell to pieces and crumbled to nothing, the light in his eyes faded with it.

That night, May slept on the couch. When she woke up, she had found that a blanket had been pulled over her and Peter was making wheatcakes at the stove. Half of them were burnt and half of them were undercooked, but they sat at the table together and like a forest regrowing from ashes, they began again.

With every passing week, they healed. Every quiet dinner, every tearful night, every night they stayed up talking about him, his absence, their grief, their loss. Every 'How was your day?', 'I made you lunch, be safe', and 'Why don't we go out for dinner? I heard there's a new Thai place down the street' healed them a little more, bit by bit.