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“I’m sick.” May grouses from where she’s slumped against the countertop. Her mom's expression is half hidden by her mug. The steam doing nothing to mask the lack of sympathy in her eyes.
“I am!” She tries again. Her mom's face doesn’t change, remaining impassive. “Mom!”
“I’m not saying anything.” Her mom shrugs, taking a sip from her mug. The short silence only serving to frustrate May further.
Why couldn't she see how serious this was?!
“I trust you enough to believe you when you say you need to stay home from school. You know what your body needs and you wouldn’t, I don’t know...” She says, waving her hand around like she was trying to pluck an idea off the top of her head, “You wouldn’t try and skip school just because your father will be teaching in the same building, would you?”
May narrows her eyes at her mom.
“He’s not even teaching your classes today, kiddo.” Her mom reminds her. The mug she’s holding goes down on to the counter. On instinct May reaches over and slides it just a little further to the left out of Benji’s grasp who immediately stretches out to try and grab it.
Her family had never been one for typical routines. Not even because of her dad’s nightly activities creeping into the day, sending him to the med bay and sending her to stay with family or curling up against her mom’s side in hospital chairs. From shoots or award shows dragging her mom away, sets acting like May’s playground on the weekends to afternoons spent in her dad’s temporary classrooms, everyday was always a little different.
Now she’s older, she can see that there were little constants in their life. Regularities like her mom fixing her dad’s tie even though May had seen him do it himself the mornings she wasn’t around; her mom always making it to parent-teacher conferences and her dad always taking her for food and trips to the Science Museum the following weekend to catch-up if he’d missed it or to celebrate if he hadn’t; May’s practiced attempts to keep her brother out of trouble.
Or.
Her dad’s continual attempts to embarrass her without even really trying that usually involve him just talking in public, holding her mom’s hand in front of other people, pointing whenever they saw her on a magazine, loudly proclaiming any of May’s recent achievements as soon as they walked into any family function or generally existing. In this particular instance, temporarily accepting a job at her school.
“But he’ll tell people we’re related! The reputation I get as a Freshman is going to stick with me for my entire High School career and if people realise I’m the little kid in those photos, I’m never going to live it down!”
“May, I would have been a ‘pleasure to have in class’ a whole lot longer than I was if that were true.” Her dad says as he walks into the room. The put together appearance of his ironed shirt and slacks and matching tie that is purposefully askew doesn’t soothe her considering it’s paired with a healing butterfly stitch at his temple that will only serve to remind people how odd of a man her father really is. It’ll get them talking. Once they talk it wont be long until someone makes the connection.
“No talking from the traitor!” She huffs.
Peter held his hands up in a surrender. In his high hair beside her, Benji lifted his hands up too, holding out one half gnawed slice of apple to their dad.
It would be cute if she felt that it wasn’t just another member of the family siding with her dad’s betrayal.
“Don't you think you’re being a little overdramatic?” Her dad asks. He sounds hesitant like he’s debating calling the whole thing off but knowing he can’t so instead trying to placate her.
“She gets that from you.” Her mom murmurs after tutting at the sight of her dad’s tie and going to fix it. Her dad dutifully lifts his chin a little, fumbling to grab her cup and taking a sip.
“Abba!” Benji calls out, waving his apple.
“No, it’s decaf.” Peter cringes, putting the mug back down, glancing over to Benji and smiling broadly, accepting the apple slice from him before speaking it back on to his plate once her mom was done with his tie.
“I can keep a secret. Kind of my whole schtick, in fact, so I’m pretty sure I can withhold the fact that you’re my kid for a few hours.”
May looks up at her dad, disbelief written across her face. With a glance over to her mom, she knows that her suspicions have some grounding.
“It’ll be fine. I’m the substitute teacher. No one cares what we say or do. We’re transient! Barely recognised!”
“Mr. Parker?” A voice calls out as soon as they approach the school gates.
Oh god.
She’s yet to put a respectable distance between them because her dad had tricked her into conversation. They were already early – her dad wanted to set up his class and as much as she was worried about the day ahead, May did enjoy their journeys into school. Since Benji had been born, their morning commutes were unofficially dubbed father-daughter time so she’d decided to head in early with him and today he’d detoured them on the way in so that they could pick up a coffee and had let her try a latte before asking her about the state of her rehearsals.
May looks over to the voice, seeing a face she sort of recognises from the year above. He seems more familiar than just someone she’s passed in the halls until it clicks that he was in Robotics Club with Aneka.
Her friend had been crushing on him practically since they’d started at the school.
“Mr. Morales?” Her dad greets in reply, halting his entrance as Miles begins to jog over to them. May stops a few paces away, listening in. “Good to see you! How’s your mom doing?” He asks, his tone dropping to something quieter, more sincere.
“She’s good. She actually ended up running for city councillor. So, busy... but I think dad would have like that, you know?”
May tilting her head as she tries to piece together half the story.
“And you? You doing okay?” Miles nods. “You and Ganke ever finish that game you were working on?”
Miles’ face lights up. Bright and excited, standing almost two foot taller now as words begin to spill out. The time her das has to prepare himself before first bell is ticking down, but he stands smiling and nodding along with Miles’ ramble like he didn’t have anywhere else to be.
“That’s really good work, Miles. Impressive stuff.”
“You think?” Miles asks, his tone rising at the end. Like he was surprised. Like he genuinely cared about her dad’s opinion of him.
She’d heard people talk about Spider-Man in that way. Had seen interviews where he’d clapped people on the shoulder, the way their chests would puff out and pride would take over their faces.
But this wasn’t Spider-Man Miles was talking to.
This was just her dad.
Just Peter Parker.
May knew the weight that it really carried to impress him. He embarrassed her constantly , and she was old enough now to know how much of a walking disaster he really was, but that also meant she understood more of where he came from, everything he’d done to get the family and the life he had, everything he’d face – to do something that made him proud, for him to think she was great. It meant a lot.
Miles didn’t know any of that though. Her dad was just another teacher to him... Right?
The warning bell echoed out from the school, May taking a hesitant step towards the building before looking back over her shoulder to watch as her dad said his goodbye to Miles.
Curiosity quickly got the better of her as Miles jogged past her and rejoined his friends closer to the school, pointing back at her dad. Realisation dawning on a few of their faces and large smiles taking over.
Instead of heading to the school, she waited, hovering until her dad was back by her side.
“How do you know him?” She asks, the question startlingly him. “Miles?”
“I was a sub for a couple months at his middle school. Good kid... just had a lot on his plate at the time.” He explains, purposefully avoiding giving anymore information about Miles’ situation.
“And he remembers you?” She presses, wondering if maybe Miles had had a chance to figure out her dad’s identity or if someone had attacked the school and he’d done a rare instance of out-of-suit heroics to earn his respect.
“He ended up spending a lot of time in my class during lunch. I let him and his friend tinker before the school got the Science club properly set up. Probably more remembers the extra screen time I let him have than anything I actually did.”
Glancing back over to Miles, May didn’t think that was true. Something warm spreading across her chest at the smile Miles and the few other students that had recognised her dad threw him as they passed by.
“How was he?” May asks as soon as Aneka’s tray was set down opposite her. Her friend arriving straight from Chemistry with her dad.
Aneka blinks, barely processing the words with how quickly they’re shot at her.
“Did he show the baby photos? Please tell me he hasn’t been showing baby photos.”
“No baby photos.” Aneka replies, taking her seat. She pops open her bag of chips, offering them out. “Well. Not of you. Benji was featured.” She adds on casually like May hasn’t had her foot tapping incessantly for the last five minutes since the bell rang, waiting for this information to prepare herself for any teasing she might hear from her classmates.
“Other than that. He was normal.”
“Normal?” May echoes, frowning. Aneka has known her and her family too long to believe such a word could apply to Peter Parker.
Aneka shrugs.
“Normal?” She repeats.
Her friend sighs, dropping the hand she had extended out with her chips and beginning to free her sandwich from it’s cling wrap.
“I don’t know. He made covalent and ionic bonds make sense.” She pauses, tilting her head up. “He did mention that he’d been in a cage match before and even I couldn’t figure out if that was a joke. So. People might have questions.”
May rolls her eyes, slumping in her chair a little from relief. Something else beginning to gnaw in her stomach.
“Did people listen to him?” She asks after a moment of silence. “Like... they paid attention?”
“After the cage match thing? Yeah.” Aneka pauses then lights up, dropping her sandwich back down. “Oh! You know Fraiser?”
May’s gut sinks more. Her own lunch not looking so appetising anymore. “Yeah...” She says slowly.
Fraiser Wilson was a class clown on the best of days. A distraction and disruption, a nuisance and exactly the kind of menace that people have accused her dad of being on the worst of them.
She’d forgotten he was in Aneka’s Chem class.
She swallows, trying hard not to think of the hours she’s seen dad pouring over prep work for classes or trying to find ways to make the worksheets left to him more exciting, trying hard not to consider how much Fraiser might have knocked that off track.
“Your dad caught this paper airplane he threw like...” She clicks her fingers, “Back turned and everything! It was kind of awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Fraiser quiet for so long. I think I discovered what peace was.”
At the end of the day, May’s reputation is still in tact. No one has approached her about her dad. His presence in the school not so detrimental to her young adult life, and actually providing her more entertainment than she’d been expecting.
Hearing her surname in the halls, hearing the few tidbits of gossip that had been sparked by her dad’s classes and grinning to herself because she was in on the secret, she knew the truth behind each and every rumour was like a game. She found herself savouring any tiny piece of gossip that she could, eager to spill it all over dinner, knowing just how much joy it’d bring her mom to tease him about it all.
Perhaps, though she would never admit it, her dad had been right.
Perhaps.
Just perhaps. She’d been a little overdramatic about it all.
Hovering outside his classroom at the end of the day, that warm feeling returned to her chest. It was empty bar Peter and one other student. The kid helping him load up the supply trolley with equipment.
Silent apart from the sound of each item hitting the metal of the trolley and textbooks being lined up along the back of the class.
“I got a quick look at your worksheet when you handed it in. You left a lot of it blank.” She hears her dad prompt gently. He doesn’t get a reply. Peering in, May spots the kid, frozen, his eyes fixed to the ground. A faint tinge of red washing over his cheeks.
“I just couldn’t be bothered.” The boy shrugs grumpily. His tone doesn’t match his posture or his face, which is still red with embarrassment. Her dad can’t see that though, his back turned.
“Because I’m just a sub, right? Doesn’t matter if you don’t finish the work I set?” A beat.
The kid shrugs.
“I don’t think you were being lazy.”
May squints, trying to figure out where he’s going with it.
“If you were being lazy, you would have left it all blank. You helped Tasha on the bits you filled in as well. I saw that.” He continues.
Silence.
“So?” The kid says, annoyed.
“So. Tasha isn’t the only one who’s allowed to accept help, you know. Giving up isn’t better because it’s less of a burden or better for your pride.” Her dad says. His voice still light and casual, not trying to accuse the boy of anything, but finally facing him head on. “But I know it’s not always easy to remember that, especially when you’re a kid and ‘reputation’ is everything – which even my kid is caught up in and-“ He pauses, catching himself. “That’s not the point here. The point is that I asked you to help me clear up. If you wanted to fill the silence as we clear up with questions about the workload, then that’s okay. I could also leave a note asking for a review session from your usual teacher, but what we’re not gonna do is let you be confused because everyone but you is allowed a little help, yeah?”
The kid doesn’t reply. His shoulders begin to slump as some of the fight and defensiveness leaves him.
It’s a posture she’s seen in her dad, back when she used to peer through the crack in their door after her dad had gotten home from a long night. It’s usually accompanied by her mom’s hand on his cheek.
Knowing when to accept the help that’s being offered.
“I just didn’t get how you explained it. You went too fast and the drawings... I don’t know.” The boy shrugs, a half aborted gesture to the board.
In his defence, May can only decipher the squiggles there because she’s grown up with them being used to teach her everything from Math through to helping her memorise old dance routines.
May shifts on her feet, realising just how much of his alter ego carries over into the rest of his life. Realising that her dad is good at what he does . Strange to see his life and him from this new perspective that isn’t shaped so entirely around her.
She knows the second her dad catches sight of her. She gives him a small wave. He gives her a half smile as he moves around his desk to grab the notes from the class.
The boy he’s talking to follows Peter’s eyeline and freezes at the sight of her. May clears her throat.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just waiting for my dad. Mind if I sit at the back of the classroom?” She asks him, getting an embarrassed and noncommittal shrug in reply.
Perhaps it wasn’t so bad if people knew they were related.