Work Text:
ric•o•chet | 'rika,SHãl
noun
(of a bullet, shell, or other projectile)
rebound one or more times off a surface.
• [with object and adverbial of direction] cause to rebound off a surface: they fired off a couple of rounds, ricocheting the bullets against a wall.
The first time she meets Peter Parker is right after Hawkeye tells her to go home.
It’s not great. She’s more than a little scraped up from the fight with the black widow and doesn’t notice when she bumps into a teenage boy.
She trips and he catches her using what has to be impossible reflexes, but she puts it out of her mind.
“Woah! Sorry, I’ve had a rough day, I’m usually more attentive than that.” Kate tells him.
The boy waves her off, “don’t worry about it.” His eyes catch on the blood on her face and the hand clutching at her side and he raises his eyebrows. “Do you need help cleaning that up? I have some medical experience.”
She’s not sure how someone who can’t be older than twenty has a medical background, but she’s not in the position to ask.
“I- Yeah. That would be great, thanks.” She breathes out, knowing she’s being too trusting but feeling too vulnerable to care.
A short walk later, she’s sitting in his empty apartment as he grabs an extensive med kit from under his bed. She should probably be wondering why this kid has this much medical stuff, but she’s too dazed from everything.
“You’re not gonna ask?” She questions.
The boy tilts his head, and then his eyes light up in realization. “Oh! About the-“ He gestures vaguely to her. She nods her head. “Yeah well, I’m not in a position to judge. If you haven’t told me, there’s probably a good reason for it.” He shrugs.
“Oh.” That’s… Surprisingly mature of him. “It’s not that I don’t trust you- Well actually, I don’t, considering we just met but I’m too tired to-“ She doesn’t realize she’s rambling until he cuts her off.
“I understand, I’ve got my fair share of trust issues.” He smiles softly. “There are some things you want to keep to yourself, you know?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You just let a complete stranger into your house.”
He shrugs, uncaring. “You needed help.” He says it as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.
She doesn’t know how to respond. Doesn’t know to talk to someone who doesn’t push and push until it breaks-
He glances at her before staring at the floor. “Look.” He breathes in. “The whole hero thing?” She looks at him, startled.
He rolls his eyes. “I saw the news with Ronin and your apartment, I don’t live under a rock.” Right. That. “Being a hero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.“ He continues. “I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times before, but I can’t in good conscience let you go without saying it. You lose a lot, more than just fights. Whatever training you’ve had won’t help you against it. There are going to be people you won’t be able to save, scraps where you have no one to help you out of, and consequences you never could have dreamed of. There’s a lot more to being a hero than kicking ass.” He exhales. “I can’t stop you, but if you ever need someone, I’m here. No matter what.”
The obvious grief in his words is the only thing keeping her from snapping at him about how she thinks she would know a bit more about being a hero than some kid off the street.
He finishes patching her up without another word, with the ease of someone who’s been doing this for years. “There.” He says, dusting off his jeans. “Uh, I don’t have much to eat, but I’m sure I can find something?”
She takes one look at his barren studio apartment and shakes her head. “I’ll order pizza, it’s the least I can do.” She has the money, this kid doesn’t, at least from the looks of it.
The boy looks like he wants to argue with her on that, but he slumps his shoulders, seemingly too tired to complain about free food. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” She smiles back.
She ends up leaving the apartment a couple of hours later, and only when she’s in her bed at home does she realize that she never got his name.
(And if a few days later she sneaks in and leaves a few hundred bucks on his table, that’s for her to know).
— — —
The second time she meets him is in Queens. She just finished spending Christmas at the Bartons.
She wouldn’t say she’s famous or anything, but a lot of people come up to her to ask for a photo or something along those lines and it’s overwhelming.
She’s trying to explain to someone that, no, she doesn’t want to go out on a date with their grandson when the boy from before waves at her.
She sighs, already resigning herself to the number of questions that are sure to come when he calls out, “hey! You never showed up to our study session! Come on!” Before she knows what’s happening, he’s grabbing her by the wrist with a surprisingly strong hold for such a skimpy kid and dragging her away from the crowd that’s formed and towards an empty alleyway.
“What are you doing?” She snaps at him, stopping in her tracks as soon as the crowd can’t see them anymore.
He turns around and drops her hands like it’s scorching hot. “Oh my god- I’m so sorry- I just- You seemed overwhelmed so I figured you’d probably want to get away but I really should’ve asked first and-“
Oh. Oh! He was helping her and she just lashed out at him.
“Nono- It’s fine. It’s actually… Thank you. It means a lot.” She says earnestly.
He scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s nothing, really.”
She wants to argue with him on that point, but he’s suddenly pushing her away. Just as she yelps a bullet whizzes past where she was moments before. “What the-“
He rushes past her and the sound of bones cracking can be heard. She whips around and sees one of the tracksuits on the floor with a crooked nose and the boy’s knuckles bloodied. “ Not cool.“ He tells the unconscious man. (Probably one of the stragglers who ran away from the fight looking for revenge. She and Clint have been working on tracking the few left).
“Holy shit.” She breathes out.
He whips around and stares at her, looking like a deer caught in headlights. She’s about to open her mouth again when he interrupts. “Peter Parker.” He says.
She furrows her eyebrows. “What?” She’s frazzled, trying to process the last few minutes, trying to process the fact that there was almost a bullet in her head and that a boy that size should not have the reflexes or the strength to knock out a guy that big.
“My name.” He clarifies. “Since I already know yours and well, nothing brings people together like pizza and attempted murder, right?”
“Right.” She echoes.
He perks up suddenly as if he heard something. “I need to go, it was nice seeing you again!” He tells her, smiling.
He runs off before she gets the chance to thank him.
She turns towards the unconscious body. “What am I going to do about you?” She wonders.
— — —
That night she goes home and searches up Peter Parker. She’s not the best at finding information, but her mom did run an online security system that she still has the codes to. She can manage.
There’s nothing. Well, there is some stuff, but it only starts a month ago. An Instagram photography account with no name attatched, documents that didn’t exist before, a charity for displaced individuals he may volunteer at, an address for a studio apartment, a job as a photographer for the Daily Bugle, and GED records. There’s no birth certificate, no medical records, nothing tracing him back to any guardians, no school pictures, nothing.
It’s weird, and none of her business, but it intrigues her. Is it a fake name? He seemed honest when he gave it out, but maybe not. Why choose an alliteration and not something more unassuming?
Is he a part of some sort of fighting ring? It would explain the extensive medkit, plus the fact that he knocked that guy out with a single punch.
She even briefly entertains the possibility of a ghost. Weirder things have happened in New York. But why would a ghost go through the effort of making an entire identity? Why get an apartment? Can ghosts even eat?
More likely answers would be a displaced individual from the Blip who had their documents disappear. Maybe an illegal immigrant with a knack for mimicking a Queens accent.
Peter Parker is a mystery waiting to be solved, and after her mother ended up being a murderer, Kate has to know the full story.
So she decides to ask around, she goes to the charity and the volunteers tell her about a boy who comes in twice a week to hand out hot meals, who hands out winter coats, and who cleans up homeless kids that have come in after a fight.
She’s reminded of the empty apartment with no sheets on the bed. A shabby couch that looks like it had been found on the side of the street. A fridge with nothing inside. The GED textbooks on the counter.
What’s in it for a boy who has nothing left to give?
She decides to leave it alone.
— — —
Meeting Kate Bishop is hard.
It’s really, really hard.
Not helping her, no, that part comes as naturally to him as breathing. A piece of May that she passed on to him.
It’s like looking into a fucked up mirror.
He looks at her and sees himself at fourteen, helping a man that only wanted to use him for his powers and watching him as if he hung the moon and the stars. A man who tossed him to the side like a broken toy.
(He’s attended far too many funerals for someone his age. He doesn’t want to attend hers).
The thing is, he knows Clint Barton. Granted, not well, but they had talked at the funeral. He hadn’t known who Peter was, or at least he didn’t say explicitly that he knew, but he still took the time to talk to him.
He hopes Kate won’t get as bad of a hand as him. She’s so young, which he knows is hypocritical of him, especially considering she’s eight years older than when he started, but she has a whole future ahead of her.
(She and her mom didn’t Blip. If he hadn’t either, they would’ve been the same age).
He knows who the Bishop family are, of course. He made it his business to know who everyone was after Beck. A wealthy family, a late father, and a prestigious security company. (His heart pounds at that last part. With two clicks she could unravel him for the fraud he is. His falsified documents stand no chance over that technology).
But he knows better than anyone that if she doesn’t want to be stopped, then she won’t. So he patches her up and tells her that he’s always here for her, no matter what.
(The what in question may or may not include magic-induced amnesia. He would never turn someone away, even if he no longer remembered them).
(It’s not as if he expects the same thing to happen to her. But then again, he hadn’t expected it to happen to him).
He finds a wad of cash on his table a few days later. There’s a simple note next to it, saying thank you with a smiley face. There’s no sign-off, but he knows it was her.
He hears about her mom and swallows back bile. He hacks into the CCTV from that night, which he knows is crossing so, so many lines and MJ would be yelling at him for it but he has to know. He can’t live in ignorance, knowing he could have stopped it. The cold resignation on Kate’s face as the cops drag Eleanor away is nausea-inducing. She doesn’t deserve it.
(“ Did you? ” A voice whispers to him. He ignores it).
The panic on her face as she gets bombarded by people surrounding her is all too familiar, and before he knows it he’s dragging her away, letting her catch her breath. He wonders if this is how Ned and MJ felt on his first day back at Midtown. He pushes that thought away.
He wants to ask her if she’s okay but before he can a gunshot sounds, and he’s pushing her away and knocking the other guy out, using more force than he usually does. He doesn’t like doing it, but he can’t web them up so that’s the next best option.
He can tell she wants to ask, of course she does, but he hears sirens and he’s saying goodbye before she realizes what’s happening.
He’s gotten pretty good at avoiding questions.
He’s also gotten pretty good at avoiding people, so it surprises him when a familiar heartbeat joins him on top of a roof.
“Kate Bishop.” He greets, not looking away from the skyline, his legs dangling off of the roof.
“Spider-Man.” She responds.
He turns around, swinging his legs, and plasters a smile on, even if she can’t see it through the mask. “How may I be of service?”
“I need you to train me.” She states.
He stares at her. “ What ?” He asks. He’s read about all her accomplishments, trained in every athletic ability there is. Fencing, gymnastics, archery, martial arts, not to mention countless subcategories of sports he doesn’t even know the names of. There’s not much he can teach her.
She sighs. “Look, I’ve had classes on everything there is, I’m a fencing state champ and I could roundhouse kick someone in my sleep. But I don’t know how to do the other stuff. How to get civilians out of a burning building in the fastest way or how to stitch a wound or dodge a bullet.” Something odd crosses her face at that, but it quickly passes.
“Okay.” He says simply.
“Okay?” She repeats, sounding surprised. As if she hadn’t expected him to say yes.
He shrugs. “Not like I have much else to do. Just one rule.”
She perks up. “Yes?”
“Mask stays on.” Sure, there’s no one to hurt if his identity is revealed, no friends to take hostage, no future ahead of him to shut down in its tracks. But the thought of it getting out again makes his chest ache. Even if he does trust her. (He trusted Beck too).
She nods quickly. “Of course! I mean, I didn’t get it at first, but not having the paparazzi swarm you every time you go outside must be nice.”
He tenses at that, flashes of phones pointing at him in the hallway surface and he quickly pushes them down. “Yeah, don’t worry, it’ll probably pass soon. You’re just the latest story right now. Next thing you know, aliens come back or some avenger gets arrested for a crime they didn’t commit and you’re back to going grocery shopping with only kids coming up to you to say hello.”
Not that he let it settle for long enough for that to happen to him, but Black Widow and Bruce Banner never got swarmed by paparazzi right? Of course, people may have been too scared to go up to them, but the attention span of the Internet lasts two seconds if you’re not facing murder accusations from an inter-dimensional ‘hero’ who ‘saved’ the world.
She nods, “I think before that would have offended me, but honestly now I can’t wait for it.”
“What made you want to learn? Not that it’s any of my business, but I kinda assumed you would want to be in the field kicking ass, not ushering grandmas out of a stairwell.”
She pauses, “I realized there’s more to being a hero than just fighting the bad guys.”
He nods. “When do you want to start?”
She grins.
— — —
She’s honestly not sure why she seeks out Spider-Man.
The masked vigilante (superhero?) is known for working alone. He’s helped out with the bigger things, of course, everyone knows the heroes who fought against Thanos, but for the most part, he tends to stick to patrolling New York.
Still, the conversation with Peter echoes in her head. If she wants to be a hero, she has to learn all the aspects. Not just kicking ass.
So he teaches her the best points to enter a burning building, how to de-escalate fights and when to turn away, how to talk people out of jumping or biting a bullet, and he teaches her how to improve her reflexes.
“I’m not planning on patrolling every night or anything.” She explains. “I just don’t want to have to turn away from a situation because I don’t know what to do. I still have to go to college, you know?”
He nods. “Yeah, I get that, school and vigilantism end up for some… Sticky situations.”
She’s pretty sure that’s a pun, and her first thought is oh my god Spider-Man just made a pun with me are we friends now oh my god and her second is to laugh.
Which, is insane. This guy has been to space, he fought Thanos, he worked with Iron Man , and she’s pretty confident she can call him a friend. She’s friends with two Avengers now. Granted, one of them is mostly retired and the other is more of an honorary Avenger than an official one but it’s still insane .
Then, one day, he shows up at her apartment door with a needle and thread in his hand and a stab wound in his stomach.
“Hey.” He grunts. “Figured this would be the perfect time to learn how to do stitches.”
She stands in shock for a moment, staring at the blood that’s dripping onto the floor of the hallway.
“Can we hurry past the shock factor? I’m bleeding out a little here.” He tells her, pain obvious in his voice.
She quickly nods and opens the door wider for him to come inside then gets him to lie down on the couch, then rushes to grab her medkit.
“First, you have to disinfect the area.” He guides her through the whole process, voice not shaking once even as she has to redo his stitches because she messed up. She did offer pain medication, but he explained that normal ones didn’t work on him. She winces in sympathy.
It’s one of the most stressful hours of her life, but at least in the end she can confidently say that she can stitch up a wound if needed.
“Thanks, I didn’t have anyone else to go to and my hands were shaking too bad to do it myself.” He tells her.
That makes her pause. How long has he been doing this? He really has no one else to go to?
“I was the only one..?” She trails off.
He tenses for a second but forces himself to seem relaxed. “Uh, yeah.”
She doesn’t push, even though her brain really wants her to. “Well, this has been educational.”
He chuckles, “I mean, figured now’s as good of a time as ever, right?”
“Right.” She echoes.
Does no one know who he is under the mask? Is there no one at home to treat his injuries? No allies he can rely on?
“I should get going.” He starts to stand up and immediately almost falls over.
“Sit down. You lost a lot of blood. You can sleep on the couch tonight.” She states, catching him and making him sit back on the couch.
“You sure? I mean, you don’t even know who I am, you have no reason to trust me.” He sounds worried. As if he could harm a fly, she’s been around him long enough to know him. She’s seen him talk to little kids and get them back to their parents, seen him buy a homeless lady a burger, watched him rescue a cat out of a tree, and guide tourists to their destinations.
“I’m sure, I trust you.” Now that she’s saying it out loud, she realizes she does. Despite not knowing who he is, he’s the first person she’s let get herself get close to since her mom got arrested.
“Thank you.” The tension eases out of his shoulders.
“Anytime.” She smiles. She gets a burst of deja vu.
When she wakes up the next morning, he’s gone, and she’s half-convinced it was a dream.
— — —
She sees Peter again at the library.
She had gone there to find a book on how to treat injuries, but all of that was forgotten when she sees him. She rushes over and grins at him. “Hey! I never got to say thank you for saving my life.”
He’s slumped over a pile of papers and textbooks, his hair is a mess, and his cheeks are gaunt. But he perks up when he hears her voice. “Oh! It was no problem.” She shakes her head fondly at the sentiment but doesn’t reply.
“Can I sit here?”
He blinks at her. “Uh, yeah! Sorry for the mess.”
She waves him off. “No worries. What are you doing?”
“Studying for my GED, the test is in a week.” He’s flipping through a couple of papers. She catches sight of a math question.
“Anything I can help with?” She asks.
“No, it’s fine.” He tells her. “I can do chemistry in my sleep.” He adds on.
She quirks an eyebrow. “Really?”
He nods. “Yeah, I mean I already know all of this, I’m honestly just doing extra work now. I’ve been working on this one problem for ages, I’m trying to figure out how to increase the tensile strength in polymers without making them too bulky, here.” He pushes his chair closer to her and starts rambling on about different acids and synthetics and nanotech.
This is the day she realizes Peter Parker is smart, like, really smart. Tony Stark-level smart. She couldn’t make heads or tails of the equations in front of her if she wanted to.
“What’s a kid like you doing getting a GED?” She wonders. Then slaps her hand over her mouth when she realizes she said it out loud, eyes widening in horror at her callousness.
He laughs. “Don’t worry, it’s a fair question. I used to go to a STEM school but ended up having to drop out. My last living relative died and I had to prioritize rent and a stable income over education.”
She winces in sympathy. She doesn’t say sorry, because God knows she’s getting sick of it being said to her.
Peter clears his throat after a moment. “Anyways, how’s the hero life treating you? Beat up any bad guys lately?” He asks.
She shakes her head. “No, it’s been surprisingly… Peaceful? I mean, I’m not a full-time vigilante like Daredevil or Spider-Man so I don’t know if they could say the same thing but it’s been smooth sailing. Actually, I think Spider-Man’s kinda taken me under his wing? I asked him for help a while back and now I’m pretty sure we’re friends? Which is so cool. I remember being a kid and looking up to him, not as much as Hawkeye, but, still. And now… It’s cool. It’s really cool.” She rambles.
Peter smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges. “Having two superhero mentors? People would kill to be in your place.”
She laughs a little sadly. “I don’t know about that… There’s still the mess with my mom. I mean, I haven’t even visited her yet.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you decide not to visit her, no one will blame you.” He doesn’t push her for explanations, doesn’t bring up the stories she knows he must have heard on the news, doesn’t pull her apart until all her wires are short-circuiting and doesn’t push.
She sighs. “The thing is I do want to visit her. She’s my mom, she took care of me, she raised me. It’s just…” She trails off.
He nods slowly. “You want to see the person she was, right? Not the person she is. But you can’t separate the two in your head, it’s not healthy. I’m not going to stand here and make the choice for you, but I think… You need closure. Whether it’s from visiting her or something else, you need a way to move on.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re right. Thanks.” She smiles. “Sorry for dumping all of this on you.”
He waves his hand. “We’re friends, right? It’s what friends do.”
When she leaves the library a few hours later, she feels a little lighter than when she stepped in.
— — —
“I need to punch something.” Kate declares loudly, interrupting Peter on the roof. His spidey sense no longer warns him whenever she sneaks up on him.
“What?” He asks, genuinely confused.
“I just saw my mom, and I need to punch something.” She smells of frustration and dry cement.
“Have you ever swung before?” He asks, lip quirking upwards.
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Uh…”
A half-hour and a lot of screaming later (seriously, even MJ would think this is excessive) and they’re both at a junkyard.
He throws her a bat he found on the floor and she catches it easily, looking at it with a little confusion. “Have at it.” He nods towards the pile of trash behind her, before turning around and smashing a pole through a broken pillar. He hears the telltale sound of glass shattering behind him a few short moments after and smiles.
They continue for a while, breaking everything they can get their hands on. Before he hears her stop.
“Have you ever wanted to quit? Being a hero?” She whispers, his enhanced hearing catches it anyways.
He snorts bitterly. “Yeah. I tried to put Spider-Man on the back burner for a while, and then an alien pretending to be Nick Fury decided to mess that up while I was on vacation, and then there was the whole shit show with Mysterio and Liberty Tower. So I guess I’m just not meant to be a civilian.” He shrugs. He doesn’t mention that he spends more of his days being Spider-Man than Peter Parker nowadays. That he doesn’t know how to be a person anymore.
She lets out a shaky exhale. “I just can’t help but wonder if I could’ve seen it if I didn’t spend so much time at fencing competitions or archery championships. Maybe I could have stopped her if I never wanted to be a hero.”
He sits down on a broken car, bringing his knees up to his chin and closing his eyes. “I think… That heroes just aren’t meant to be happy. Which is depressing as hell, but there are certain sacrifices you have to make to live this life. Captain America and his old life, Iron Man and his family, I… I’ve had better days.” He laughs mirthlessly. “But at the end of the day, it’s not up to us to choose what happens. It’s up to us to decide what happens after. Your mom was never your responsibility, you were a kid. It’s not on you to fix her mistakes. But it is up to you to decide what you’re going to do about them now that she’s made them.”
“I just… I miss her so much.” She starts sniffling and Peter gets up. “No, no, it’s fine. It’s been months, I don’t know why I’m still-“ He interrupts her by giving her a hug and her knees give out from underneath her. They slide down to the floor and she starts bawling, Peter holds her the whole time.
“Thanks.” She says a few minutes later, her breathing steadily getting under control. “I think I needed that.” She removes herself from his arms and wipes her eyes.
“What are superhero mentors for, right?” He jokes, a little awkwardly.
She laughs softly and then clears her throat. “Hey, can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to!” She rushes out.
His spider-sense thrums in the back of his mind in a dull warning. “Yeah?” He prompts anyway.
“What was it like? Space?” She asks curiously. He knows he’s dodged the topic every time it comes up, but after what she just shared, he feels like he owes it to her, even if he knows she would never expect that of him.
He pauses. “I have a healing factor.” He starts slowly. “I have this sort of sixth sense too, kinda like a hum telling me whenever there’s danger?” She nods. “So while getting dusted my body was trying to heal me, and my head was screaming that I was in danger, and I could feel the entire thing. Every second of my body getting torn into pieces .” His voice breaks.
Kate stares at him in shock, her eyes still wet. “You didn’t deserve that.”
He shrugs, blinking back flashes of red planets and dust. He feels exhausted. “It’s fine.”
She opens her mouth to argue with him when he sends her a tired look, not that she can see it. “Seriously, Kate. It’s okay. But I think I’m going to head out, I’ve had a long day.”
She nods quickly, understanding etched on her face. “Yeah, me too.” She sighs. “Until next time?” She asks.
He webs a far away building. “Until next time.” He nods, swinging away.
He waits for a second on the wall before she yells out. “Wait! How am I supposed to get home? Spidey!”
He cackles.
(He ends up returning her home, he’s not that much of a jerk. Although the punch in the shoulder he receives standing in her doorway is probably deserved).
— — —
Sometimes, Spider-Man will disappear from her life. He still appears on the news, but he never seeks her out.
She sees Peter Parker during one of these periods one day, and she walks up to him, exchanging too stiff pleasantries. He looks tired. There’s a small cut above his eyebrow. She makes an excuse about having to leave and watches his shoulders relax in relief.
Spider-Man always shows up after a week or two. He doesn’t provide an explanation or an apology, and she understands, in a way that she hadn’t before .
That doesn’t stop her from obsessively watching the news on those days when he disappears, wondering if anyone else is worried about him, trying not to think of who will patch him up this time or if anyone in his life even knows . Trying and failing because her heart clenches every time that fucking rhino man of all things lands a particularly hard punch on someone she’s come to consider a brother.
Trying and failing because she knows he’s capable, knows he has years of medical experience from his vigilantism and hints of a guardian who used to be a nurse, and knows how to patch himself up. But that never stops her from worrying.
Sometimes, she wonders if this is how her mother felt during that week in December that flipped both of their lives upside-down, and she can’t help but feel a pang of empathy before quickly shoving it down.
She gets up from in front of the TV, the screen showing the aftermath of a fight between some sort of dinosaur-looking thing and Spiderman, and heats some day old pasta.
The world keeps spinning.
— — —
“Look, seriously, let me pay.” He insists, already fumbling out his wallet.
Kate raises an eyebrow, looking him up and down, lingering on his unwashed hair and sleeves with moth bites, there’s a bruise peeking out under his sleeve and he quickly pulls it down.
Peter blushes. “I was saving this until we had something to eat, but I got a job!” He beams. “Like a real, paying, stable job. I can afford power and food now, it’s insane.”
“That’s great! What are you, a scientist? Researcher?” Kate asks, pushing past the depressing last sentence. She’s once again reminded of how privileged her upbringing had been.
It’s not that she hasn’t tried to offer him more money after that first night. She has plenty to spare, even with her mother’s business getting searched a few months ago. It’s just that any cash she tries to give him mysteriously appears back in her apartment the next day. Her apartment, which is on the sixth floor. Her apartment that has no fingerprints on the door or any locks broken. Her apartment that she’s sure she didn’t tell him the address of.
But he’s never done anything other than return the money, and strangely, she feels at ease with Peter. An easy trust between the two of them.
“I’m an assistant at a law firm. It’s small, and we mostly get paid in food, but it’s the first place that’s felt like home in a little while.” He smiles softly.
She’s about to congratulate him when a girl appears from the back. “Hey, sorry it took so long, we’ve been so understaffed and- Hey! Peter Parker, right?” Her face brightens as if she’s indulging in an inside joke.
Peter pulls his hands up to his face and groans. “Can we please just, never bring that up? Ever?” He asks. There’s a surprising amount of fondness in his eyes for her.
She grins. “Sure, Peter Parker. What did you guys want to order?”
They give their orders, a black tea and blueberry muffin for Peter, a vanilla iced coffee and Boston cream for her. Peter seems to be on the balls of his feet, alternating between trying to talk to the employee and glancing out of the door as if he’d like to run and never turn back.
There’s something there, she thinks, in the way Peter seems to anticipate the girl’s moves, the way he finishes her sentences, the longing in his eyes that reminds her of someone yearning to return home.
There’s something there, in the familiarity of their movements, dancing along words and steps and not even realizing. The recognition in his eyes, the lack of it in hers.
She watches them interact while the girl’s coworker prepares their drinks, and she’s not sure if it’s a trick of the light or not but she thinks that Peter’s eyes look a little wet as the two talk.
Their orders seemingly arrive far too soon, by the way Peter and the girl’s face falls, even though Kate and the coworker had exchanged a knowing glint and Kate knows that it does not take ten minutes to make an iced coffee.
They wave goodbye, the girl subtly asking if she’ll see him again and Peter freezing for a fraction of a second, before responding maybe in a way that makes Kate think he will never step into this pastry shop again.
She doesn’t press, because he never does with her.
— — —
She can count the things she knows about Spider-Man on two hands, and most of them come from the news.
She knows that he started two years before the blip, that he used to have some sort of contact with the avengers before , she knows that there is a before from the stories he tells her (but she’s not sure what this life-changing thing he keeps referring to is), she knows that he died in space, she knows that he pulls back his punches because if he didn’t he could kill someone with his pinkie, that he doesn’t thermoregulate based of how often he shows up at her doorstep times at fuck o’clock in the morning looking five seconds from passing out from the cold even though he always has his mask on a ridiculous amount of times, she knows that sneezes near peppermint, and she knows that he’s young.
That last fact isn’t something she realizes until he’s been guiding her for a few months, not until the snow on the ground starts turning to muddy pavements and then to dandelions.
She doesn’t realize until he accidentally lets it slip in a bitter joke against Tony Stark for recruiting child soldiers to fight battles of men for reasons they knew nothing about. She doesn’t realize until he lets it slip that he had been fourteen when Captain America dropped a jet bridge on him.
He doesn’t recognize what he’s let slip until he sees that she hasn’t moved from her spot on the couch for two minutes, frozen and gaping at him.
She knows she’s young, hears it in Clint’s old condescending tone and sees it in Spider-Man’s protective nature, but she doesn’t understand those actions until she feels a flair of anger aimed at a billionaire who has been dead for two years.
He had a bad night, she thinks. Which makes it sound so much less than it is. As if a bad night can’t be calling the cops on your mother, as if a bad night can’t be world-shattering,
She had been getting ready to go to bed when there was a knock on the window.
So, she did what she did best. She started talking, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye while she ran around making pasta, refusing his offer to let him help. She had already eaten dinner, but by now she knows how freakishly fast his metabolism is, and by the looks of it, he doesn’t seem to have remembered to do much other than get out of bed to come here.
She watched as he finished the pasta slowly, almost methodically, mask rolled up to his nose. She watched as the tension slowly eased out of his shoulders, and he started talking for more than a couple of words at a time again, back to his rambling self.
Then he let it slip while doing the dishes after insisting that he help out.
“Shit ,” Spider-Man whispers. The faucet turns off immediately. “ Fuck, shit, fuck .” He starts pacing in the way that has become so familiar to her in the past few months, trying to run a hand through his hair before he realizes he’s wearing a mask, an action that would usually make her laugh.
He turns on her, white eyes widening. “You didn’t hear that.”
She balks. “Didn’t hear what, exactly? The fact that Tony fucking Stark blackmailed a minor, a child , to fight some of the most powerful people on Earth? Or the fact that you aren’t older than nineteen?”
He inhales sharply and sits down on a chair before getting up and pacing again, then sitting back down, all within a few seconds or hours, or years. He puts his head in his hands, as if exasperated with her, and shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that.” He whispers, a tremble in his voice.
She feels that protective anger surge up again, feels their roles shifting, feels herself moving from the mindset that treats him as a mentor, as an older brother, to a younger one, someone to protect (although she’s well aware he can more than take care of himself).
“Oh yeah?” She snarls, she knows the anger is misplaced, that she’s not upset at him, that she’s angry she had been fighting with a child for all these months and that she hasn’t noticed. She takes a deep breath in. “Then tell me what it was like.” She says pointedly. Spider-Man doesn’t respond and she sighs, getting up to make herself a cup of coffee. It’s going to be a long night.
She looks back at the living room to see his neck craned towards her from the back of his chair, a movement that would have been unnatural has it not been Spider-Man. “I’m sorry.” He says. She’s not sure what for.
“Why?“ She asks. She’s known this boy for close to a year and she’s only now getting through his hard exterior, his untouchable identity that she will shamefully admit she scoured the darkest parts of the internet for, only to see that the only thing anyone has come up with is that he might live in someplace in Queens. But with how often he bounds towards Midtown or even Hell’s Kitchen to help out Daredevil occasionally they can’t even be sure of that. She can’t get rid of the feeling that there’s a gap there, that there should be something that isn’t there but has been hidden with something much more than technology.
“Why become Spider-Man?“ She asks, not because she doesn’t understand the need to become something more, but because she doesn’t know what would make him risk his life every day when he should have been studying for a math test.
The whites on his mask close. He faces the floor. “There was a mugging.” He starts. “A gun that accidentally went off over $37.“ He laughs bitterly. She doesn’t fully understand the words, but she can feel the weight of them, the grief carefully lacing every word. “I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else.”
“Mr. Stark had asked me that same question, you know.” He adds, almost as an afterthought.
It hits her that he has not once referred to Iron Man as anything other than Mr. Stark for as long as she’s known him, despite the two knowing each other for years, yet another hint towards his youth that she had missed.
“When you do things I can but don’t,” he starts. “And then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.”
She blinks, once, twice, thrice.
She looks at him as is reminded of a story her father had told her when she was younger. Of a man holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” He continues. “I’m sorry for everything I’m still not telling you.”
“Then tell me.” She pleads. “You know everything about me, and I’m only learning that I’ve been fighting crime with a child- “
“Don’t.” He turns sharply towards her. “I stopped being a child a long time ago.”
She exhales slowly. “Okay.” She says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt your capabilities, you are more than qualified, and I’ve learned a lot from you.”
“Qualified -“ He snorts, self-deprecating. “Yeah, right, because qualified people almost break the entire multiverse.” She has a feeling he’s rolling his eyes under the mask. She stays silent, under the impression that he has more he wants to share. “There will always be scraps I can’t get out of, things I can’t fix with a couple of webs, people I can’t save.” His voice cracks, he pulls his knees up and he buries his head in them, exhaling deeply.
The words ring in her ears, and she’s thrown back to an apartment in Queens from almost half a year ago, and suddenly, several things click into place. “Peter?” She whispers, moving towards him, hand outstretched to do something.
He stares at her. Then he sighs, and with all the weight of a man marching up to a guillotine, he takes his mask off in a fluid motion. Brown curls and large brown eyes stare at her, a resigned expression on his face.
She stares at him for a long moment, taking in every detail of his face that she didn’t think to note before. The ruffled hair, a small scar on his jaw, a nose that’s crooked from having been broken one too many times. She closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose, and exhales deeply.
He clears his throat. “Cat’s out of the bag then?” He laughs, a little hysterically. “Can you give me some time to like, I don’t know, pack or something? Maybe buy a ticket to Mexico before you reveal my identity?” He implores.
She stares at him confusedly, tilting her head. She understands what he means, but she also doesn’t understand why the hell he thinks she would do something like that to him. Not that she would do it to anyone, but especially not someone she calls a friend, not two people she’s started to view as brothers.
“Peter, I would never.” She states vehemently.
“That’s what they all say.” He laughs bitterly, shoulders far too heavy for someone so young.
She wants to ask, God does she want to ask. To pick his brain apart and ask him why and how and what. But he’s already revealed so much tonight and his hands are trembling.
“I’m serious.” She tells him. He looks at her in the eye for a long time. It unnerves her to see Peter like this, his face staring at her yet everything about him screaming Spider-Man.
He gets up abruptly, stumbling towards the door as if he’s a drunk man. “I need to go.” He whispers, hand on the doorknob.
She nods, she doesn’t press, because he never has. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He repeats quietly.
And with a slam of a door that tells her he doesn’t quite have a handle on his super strength, he leaves.
She sits there for a few seconds, or maybe a few hours. She gets up gets ready for bed. The world keeps spinning.
— — —
One week turns into two turns into a month. The longest time she has spent without Spider-Man since that night on the rooftop.
She goes over it in her head no less than a million times.
What if she hadn’t said his name? If she pretended she didn’t know? But she’s never been a good liar, and after her mother, she has a newfound hatred for dishonesty.
She tries to piece Peter Parker together in her head like some sort of fucked up news report.
Peter Parker, newly eighteen, started vigilantism at fourteen. His more well-known battles consist of being blackmailed into joining team Iron Man, taking down the Vulture, fighting Thanos on Titan, and taking down the Elementals in Europe (no matter how much he insists that that was ‘Night Monkey’), and the incident at Liberty Tower.
He’s a high school dropout she thinks, although he has no records of ever attending a high school, so she’s not sure about that.
He volunteers at a charity organization called FEAST started by May Parker, who, despite what Kate initially thought, has no records of being related to Peter Parker.
He also works at a law firm, Nelson and Murdock, which mostly takes on pro bono work and is closely associated with Daredevil, likely how Peter met them.
Other than that and some preferences, she doesn’t know much else about him.
(“Smushed down flat with pickles? Who asks for that?” Kate watches bread crumbs land on Spider-Man’s lap in horror.
“It’s good!” Spidey insists, sitting on the rooftop of someplace called ‘Delmar’s that she’s never heard of).
She doesn’t know anything about him growing up, his friends, or even his family.
She can’t figure out anything else about him without talking to him, and honestly, she misses him. Spider-Man has become one of her closest friends, and although Clint’s weekly calls are nice, nothing compares to having someone out with you on the field.
Still, she knows how important his secret identity was to him. Especially if he’s been doing this since he was fourteen without anyone ever knowing. So she waits for him to find her first.
One month and four days in, she find a note on her coffee table after changing out of her work clothes.
Rooftop, 7 PM. I need to talk to you.
-SM
She stares at it for a while. Then stares at it some more. Then she starts to get dressed again, lacing up her knee-high boots and cursing out how long they take to put on and running out of her apartment.
That’s how she finds Peter at the first place she had met Spider-Man in costume.
His feet are dangling off the edge and he’s in his civilian clothing, a stark contrast to the night she first sought him out.
Instead of him turning around, she takes a seat next to him. Trusting him to catch her if she falls.
“Hi.” He greets, staring at the road below.
“Hi.” She repeats, scanning him. His knee is bopping up and down, there are bags under his eyes.
He takes a deep breath in. “I’m Spider-Man.” He says sullenly.
She nods. “You are.”
He pauses for a moment, then turns to face her for the first time that night. “I’m sorry for running out on you.” His eyes are tinted red. “You didn’t deserve that. You were rightfully upset, I should’ve told you or talked to you or…” He trails off. “I owe you the full story at the very least, then you can decide if you hate me or not.” She’s about to protest that she would never hate him for something like this when he interrupts her. “Do you remember the incident at Liberty Tower?” He asks. There’s a weariness in his eyes that she’s never seen before. She nods slowly.
He starts explaining everything, getting his powers and the constant sensory overloads that came from them. He talks about Uncle Ben, how he bled out in his arms, and the reason he became Spiderman. He talks about starting to sneak out to patrol and talks about going to Berlin after Tony Stark showed up on his couch. He talks about everything leading up to Homecoming and the night itself, he talks about Infinity War and Mysterio, he talks about getting his identity revealed and ignores her confused look at that.
He talks about getting held in custody, about the cameras pointed at him in hallways, about rejection letters from every school he and his friends had applied to. Dread grows in her stomach for reasons she doesn’t quite know yet.
He explains his half-baked plan to ask Dr. Strange for help and everything that came after. The multiverse, May, the other Spider-Mans, and finally, the memory spell.
He pours it all out and so she only interrupts to ask for clarifications.
She doesn’t point out how his eyes get teary while talking about May.
He talks about the after too, about visiting MJ and Ned with a note in his hand that he never read, about giving a summary of the events at Liberty Tower to a lawyer who helped him get documents and a job, about how much she’s helped him, about how grateful he was to finally have a friend again.
It’s a lot to take in, and once he finishes she pulls him into a hug, leaving him stunned for a few moments before he returns it. Neither of them mention the wet spots on her sweater once they pull apart.
“I’m so sorry.” She says, despite hating that phrase when it’s said to her. She needs to say something, but she’s at a loss for words. There’s no wiki guide for this, no how-to on what to do after your closest friend tells you that everyone he has ever loved has either died or forgotten him.
Still, there’s a part of her that understands. Not that her story is comparable to his, but she’s had her fair share shit to go through. Her dad died when she was young too, her mom ended up being a murderer and Kate had to have her arrested in front of her eyes, the way her only friends (who were honestly terrible influences) had been hanging around her because of her family’s status and abandoned her after because she finally put her foot down and wouldn’t allow them to leech off her anymore.
She’s not trying to make it about herself, and yeah, it’s not the same. People remember her, and she has Clint and his family if she ever needs someone, but her entire life feels like it turned upside down too. She gets it.
(It makes her ashamed to admit the relief she felt when she realized someone else got it too).
“It’s-“ He starts.
“It’s not okay.” She cuts him off sharply. His eyes widen at her. “Don’t give me that look, I know what you were going to say. It’s not okay. You’re allowed to not be okay.”
He hums, it’s not believing, but it’s a start. There’s no way to undo the effects of the last year, or hell, his entire superhero career and then some in a single night. She’ll take it for now.
She bumps her shoulder into his and smirks. “So, MJ?” She asks, teasing.
He groans into his hands, and for a moment, it feels like it’s just the two of them in this little bubble. It’s starting to drizzle, the sun has long since gone down, and the holidays are on the horizon.
It feels nice, like something she hasn’t known for almost a year, like something she thought she could never return to.
It feels safe.
— — —
The gold lettering of the pastry shop is chipping off.
Peter stares at the mostly blackened P in Pan while Kate tries to convince him to go in.
He can see MJ in the shop, she’s wiping down some tables currently, supposedly not noticing the duo who have been in front of the shop for ten minutes now.
Ned’s sitting a the counter chatting to her, they look happy. Safe. They’re better off without him.
“You promised them.” Kate reminds him.
He nods. “I did.”
“And then you took the choice of whether or not they wanted to stay in your life away from them,” Kate tells him bluntly.
Peter winces guiltily. “I did.” He repeats, softer this time.
“You can leave at any point.” She assures gently.
Peter nods, more to himself than to her, and puffs up his chest, taking a step forward towards the doorway before turning to her. “You’ll be here?” He asks, fidgeting with the end of his sleeve.
“I’ll be here.” She promises.
Peter closes his eyes and sighs, then walks through the doorway.
Kate got him to ditch the note this time and told him to speak from the heart, or whatever.
(Matt thought that that was a horrible idea, but Karen agreed with her, so she’s probably right).
MJ and Ned turn towards him, Peter breathes in, and just as he’s about to talk, he falters.
What if they don’t believe him? What if they think he’s some kind of creep and call the cops on him and he can never see them again because they got a restraining order against him and-
He glances out the window and catches Kate’s eye. She’s standing tall, smiling proudly at him, and she gives him a thumbs up once she sees him looking at her.
He gives her a grateful nod, then turns back towards his best friends with newfound confidence.
“I know this is all going to sound insane, but I need you guys to hear me out. If you don’t believe me, then I’ll leave the second you guys tell me to. I just need a chance.”
MJ and Ned turn towards each other and shrug. They turn back to him and gesture at him to go on.
He starts at the end. The memory spell, the night at Liberty Tower. He works backward, recounting the events of their last four years (or nine, technically) together.
MJ looks skeptical, she clutches her broken black dahlia necklace and something flickers in her eyes when he starts explaining the origin of it.
He can’t tell if Ned believes him or not, but he seems excited at the prospect. He mouths guy in the chair when Peter explains his role in his vigilantism.
He finishes and looks straight at the floor. He feels exhausted. The moments of silence that come afterward are the longest of his life.
That is until Ned pokes him in the arm and tells him to look up. He outstretches his arm, looking confused at himself at the gesture, but Peter immediately understands. He falls back into the rhythm of their handshake with ease.
Ned seems to be more and more surprised as it goes on, until the very end when he gasps and stumbles. Peter catches him easily and Ned gapes up at him.
“Peter.” Ned gasps, and throws himself at him, hugging him tightly. “I remember, I remember .”
Tears spring up behind Peter’s eyes and he laughs, hugging Ned just as tightly back, having to remind himself of his strength.
He takes a tentative step back and stares at MJ.
She’s staring at him with rage. She struts towards him and punches him in the shoulder. “You promised to tell us months ago.” Tears are glistening in her eyes. He can’t find in himself to feel guilty right now when they believe him.
They remember him.
MJ pulls him into a hug and kisses him before he has a chance to respond. He stands still for a moment in shock, before wrapping his arms around her neck and waist.
“I love you too.” He says as soon as they depart.
She sniffles. “You better, I’ve been waiting to hear that since December.”
He smiles fondly at her and glances out the window again.
Kate is beaming at him, and as soon as she sees him she starts jumping up and down and yelling out, “that’s my boy!” It’s muffled because of the glass, but she knows Peter hears it just fine.
He rolls his eyes exasperatedly at her, and grins back.
“Who’s that?” Ned asks, watching the interaction confusedly. MJ’s eyes widen in recognition, and she tilts his head at him in a silent question.
Peter wraps his hand around her waist and pulls her a bit closer to him, relishing in the goosebumps it sends up his arms. He bumps her shoulder softly. “There’s someone I want you guys to meet.”
— — —
Peter slumps down onto the couch, his mask is thrown haphazardly onto the couch. Kate eyes the gushing wound on his arm and sighs. “MJ!” She calls. “Can you grab the medkit?”
MJ strolls in, kit in hand. “Already on it.”
Peter rolls his eyes exasperatedly, “it’s just a scrape, c’mon.”
Kate gives him a look . “If by scrape you mean a stab wound , then sure.” She rifles through the box, pulling out a needle and thread.
She starts disinfecting his arm and mutters a quick apology at his wince, easily falling into the routine of stitching him up. Ned chatters at him the whole time, distracting him from the thread pulling in his arm.
MJ stares at them, there’s something Kate can’t quite identify in her eyes.
Once she’s done, MJ pulls her to the side. “Thank you.” She tells her, staring into her eyes.
Kate tilts her head. “For what?” She asks.
“Being there for him.” She says simply.
That night, when they’re all sitting cross-legged at Kate’s TV, she gets up to grab some hot chocolate staring at the scene below her.
Ned is laughing at some remark MJ had said, Peter is smiling larger than she’s ever seen before.
A faint smell of peppermint comes through one of the windows and Peter starts to sneeze, his friends giggling at him while he pouts.
It’s been a year since her mom got arrested, a year since she met Peter Parker, four months since he reunited with MJ and Ned, and five minutes until the New Year.
She lands back on the couch, passing Peter his cup of hot chocolate. He nudges her shoulder and smiles gratefully.
It feels like coming home.