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May Parker worries. She worries and she swore she wouldn’t. Swore she wouldn’t be that sort of Aunt. Instead, she would be the cool Aunt. Just like Ben had been the cool uncle. But she can’t help worrying about her boy, because he is her boy and mothers worry and she’s not a mother by definition of the word, but she is his mother in all the ways that count.
Taking Peter in had been an easy decision. Scrap that; there hadn’t even been a decision to make, they simply did.
Ben’s study became a bedroom and their little family grew from two to three.
May couldn’t have kids – she’d known that fact for a long time and had made peace with it, she and Ben didn’t need kids the way some couples did. They were perfectly content just the two of them and thought that if they ever got particularly clucky, they’d take in a dog. Or a fish. (But not a cat, neither of them were cat-people)
But then Richard and Mary were gone, leaving a little boy behind. And May and Ben loved their nephew, they really did, but they loved that they could care for Peter when needed, love him wholeheartedly, but return him to his parents at the end of each stay. And doesn’t that sound terrible? It does. But May and Ben were very happy not being parents, but made for a great Uncle and Aunt, and that was enough for them. So to say adapting to having a four-year-old running about the house was a little difficult was an understatement.
Suddenly they were caring for a toddler – a confused, sad and lost toddler who just wanted his mother and father back, a toddler that needed attention and crusts cut off his sandwiches and toast, a toddler that refused to eat red vegetables for some, unbeknownst reason. And the tantrums – the tantrums – tested their patience a bunch of times, but despite all this, Peter Parker went from being a nephew to a son within the week.
May and Ben weren’t set up to have a son, they didn’t exactly have much room for a busy, energetic child and they weren’t exactly equipped with parenting skills but with starts and falters, they slowly worked out how the whole family shtick worked and Peter became their world, and May knows that they became his.
So May worried from the start – who wouldn’t? Peter had lost his parents. That was more than enough reason alone to worry. She worried that she wasn’t doing a good enough job, that she wasn’t enough of a mother, she worried about how to be a good mother and still be a good wife, about how to love and nourish their little family enough.
For the first few months, Peter was reserved and cautious, not able to comprehend why his parents were gone and that May and Ben wouldn’t disappear too and it broke her heart when the toddler would wake them up, all teary eyed and hiccupping. But over time, those nights became further and fewer between and with every passing day, Peter seemed a little bubblier, a little more energetic, a little more like a toddler should be, until they were a close-knit family and neither May nor Ben could comprehend life without a child.
Their lives changed, sure; they weren’t as social, didn’t go out as often and the simplest things like meal times and work schedules had to change but they wouldn’t change it for the world. Things became smooth, easy, and May worried less.
Then Peter started school, and it was clear from day one that he was a little too intelligent for his own good, but couldn’t quite show it in the right ways and he seemed to take more of an interest in work than he did the other children. He seemed happy enough, but May was sure five year olds weren’t supposed to be constantly pouring over books and documentaries and chattering about science and math and everything else that May and Ben had no clue about. She tried to nudge him towards sports, extra curricula’s and anything else even vaguely social and more age appropriate to no avail.
“Let the little guy do his thing,” Ben had said, nodding towards where Peter sat by the heater, sketching out crazy creations that he swore would work (and May wasn’t sure whether the kid was just creative or a genius), “You’re happy, aren’t you, bud?”
Peter had nodded happily and held up some sort of mechanical drawing. May would have been happy with a stick figure, but she and Ben encouraged him no less.
In his second year of school, Peter met Ned Leeds, and finally he seemed to connect with someone. The two became inseparable and ran into far too much trouble together. The first notable incident was when the two of them broke out Ben’s tools and took apart the DVD player. It took nearly a month, but to her amazement, the two managed to put it back together again. A fascination with what May could only put down to problem solving was born and together, Peter and Ned became quite the young scientists-slash-engineers, building anything and everything from the entire Hogwarts castle out of Lego to electronic skateboards that the two of them were far too clumsy to actually use. And whilst Peter was happy to build and create and problem solve at home and at school out of pure interest, Ned was the one who wanted more and had them joining clubs and competitions and her little boy became so immersed in the world.
Before she knew it, her little boy wasn’t so little anymore, and Peter (and thankfully Ned as well) was accepted into Midtown School of Science and Technology where he flourished academically. Sure, May still worried, because that’s what mothers do, but more than anything, she was filled with pride and she and Ben were more often than not astounded with the things Peter accomplished at school. Of course, having a teenager in the apartment wasn’t all smooth sailing, there were plenty of disagreements and difficult conversations, but that was all just par for the course, right?
And then, with no warning, their little family went from three, back to two. One morning, May was making Ben toast and coffee to send him off to work, and that evening, he didn’t come home. A Tragic Accident, the police had called it. But it was no accident in May’s eyes. That thief, that thug, had pulled the trigger. Twice. And her Ben, Peter’s uncle, never came home again.
May hadn’t been a very good mother in the weeks that followed, she hadn’t been a very good anything to be honest. She hadn’t grieved well – was it even possible to grieve well? Peter had needed her, she’d needed him, but she threw herself into her work, exhausting herself every day, coming home late, trying to avoid grieving altogether. Because Ben was gone, but life was still rocketing on around them, and suddenly May had more than a nephew to worry about. Could they stay in the apartment? Would May need to pick up more shifts? Start a new job? Where could they cut back expenses? She was so wound up in management mode, so lost without Ben that she couldn’t see how lost Peter was, too. In retrospect, he’d hidden his feelings well, or maybe she just hadn’t been around enough to see Peter fall apart, but eventually she did. Perhaps a month after it happened, the two of them finally broke down in front of each other and it was absolutely gut wrenching to know that Peter was experiencing the same pain and anguish that she was. But of course he was. They’d both loved Ben unconditionally, everyone had.
And then the grief began to subside and there was room to worry again because Peter was hurting, anyone could see it, and something fundamental about him had changed. She just didn’t know what until months later.
“What the fuck?!”
If she wasn’t so damn shocked she’d have laughed at the expression on Peter’s face as he’d spun around to face her, gangly limbs flailing as his eyes darted from her, to the doorway, to the window, as if looking for some way to undo the damage already done. Because there he was, her boy, dressed head to toe as the spider vigilante that had been sporadically popping up over the news. The very same vigilante that threw himself off of buildings and picked fights with dangerous maniacs. And she hadn’t thought much of the character, assumed that someone capable and experienced was beneath the mask. Never had she considered that it could be a child underneath, her child, no less.
Peter’s mouth opens and closes and he seems to make a few aborted attempts at speech as he hops around the room, dragging clothes on over the uniform, but May simply holds up a hand, and with the other, snaps the door shut. She just needs one damn minute to process.
“May?” His voice is timid, quiet, scared, but she doesn’t respond.
She doesn’t consider for a second that it’s a costume but she wishes it were that simple. Everything makes a lot more sense now – the bruises, the late nights, the secrets and oh god, Tony Fucking Stark. That internship.
She swings the door back open. Peter’s in sweat pants and a hoodie now, all evidence of the suit gone. He’s standing there, waiting as if he doesn’t know how May will react. She doesn’t know how to react.
“May?” He repeats quietly, but still, she stays silent, giving him a good once-over, checking for any signs for injury. He seems to be, impossibly, okay.
She thinks through her options – there’s anger and punishment and guilt-tripping, none of which have ever really been her style. And she knows, without thought or doubt, that this isn’t something she can just put an end to. Which leaves only one other option – support. She doesn’t have to be happy about this, but she can be there for him, and maybe she doesn’t have all the answers just yet, and maybe it makes her a terrible mother for not at least trying to stop him, but all she knows in the moment is that her nephew, her boy, is standing in front of her looking scared and lost but alive.
She strides forwards and Peter stiffens, “May, I swear, it’s not- I’m just- I can explain-” but she takes him into her arms with a muttered shut up and pulls him close, one hand in his hair and the other around his shoulders. And she knows they’re going to have a lot to work out, knows that she’s just gotten a million more reasons to worry, but they’ll work it out. They always do.