Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had taken a fair amount of begging, wheedling, and general good behavior for several weeks before Miles had received permission from his parents. The celebration is, on paper, for winter break. Privately, it is Miles’ celebration of one year as Spider-man.

It feels important. He wants to bask in that milestone, at least for a little while.

Another exceptionally motivating factor is that Aunt May has a winter home, in which Peter had unofficially invited all of them for the season. Of course Miles wants an excuse to hang out somewhere new for 5 days straight.

Aunt May’s car, which Peter had apparently stolen for the purposes of the trip, is a lovely grit-silver minivan with both rearview mirrors bent out of alignment, presumably from many years of use. Miles earns the seat of honor, which is the slightly stained passenger seat that has a broken glove compartment and a cracked visor mirror. Gwen and Peni had co-opted the front row as their own, in a way that successfully made Miles slightly jealous. Porker is small enough that seatbelts are just about useless on him, so he has taken residence on the top of the front row’s headrest, giving him a surveyor’s view of the van.

Noir had been the most difficult to wrangle. It had taken a significant amount of time and guilt-tripping on Miles’ part to convince him that his New York City could survive for one week without him, and even despite this agreement they had been forced to practically kidnap him from his apartment flat. Peni had dropped in from the ceiling, flattening whatever papers the detective had been reading at that moment, and then dragged him through the portal bodily into the car.

He’s still lying silently in the backseat, glaring murderously at the car window to indicate his disapproval. Miles refuses to look back at him because his devastating stare might actually succeed in making him feel guilty.

“Everyone alive?” There’s a chorus of affirmations, except for Noir, who’s still brooding in silence. Peni temporarily scrambles into the front to check their dimensional anchors, and then makes a disgusted face at the car’s ancient interface. 

“What is this,” she says, sounding deeply affronted.

“Car,” Peter answers back blankly.

“Is this even usable?”

“Yes, probably. Sit back down.”

Miles swats her back to her seat as Peter kicks the car to life.

The engine sputters in a series of aggressive coughs. Gwen starts up, dislodging Porker, and swears loudly as they start to crawl out of the driveway.

“Language,” Noir mumbles, apparently unable to sulk for long enough to resist chiding them.

Gwen sticks her tongue out, mostly in spirit since the positioning of Noir’s hat makes it so he can’t see anything. “I’m 16,” she snipes, arms crossed. 

“That’s almost old enough to walk on your own,” Peter says absentmindedly. He’s carefully guiding the van out of Miles’ street, which gives him an excuse to ignore the indignant cries from all three children. Noir covers his entire face with his hat, looking patently miserable. 

__

“Why,” Noir says tersely. “Are we goin' so fast.”

His voice is strained and trembling, and Miles would find it funny if he didn’t sound so genuinely terrified. 

To be fair, spontaneously putting someone from 1933 into a vehicle moving at 80 miles per hour is probably a shock to the system. They’re blazing down the freeway, Gwen with her heels kicked up against the car doors and Peni sticking her head out of the window, and Noir is trembling with so much barely-restrained panic that he reminds Miles of a rabid dog.

“This is a normal freeway speed. It’s safe, I’m pretty sure.” Peter’s eloquent explanation fails to calm him in the slightest. Out of the corner of Miles’ eye, he sees Noir make a sharp, aborted movement toward the car door, and without looking back Peter plasters him to the spot with a netting web. “Don’t jump out of moving cars. Is it too stuffy in here? Man, I sure would hate to be wearing my mask right now, because it's so stuffy.”

It’s a very poorly veiled attempt of many attempts to get Noir to take off his mask. Miles suspects there will be many more in the near future before Peni starts resorting to outright grabbing.

Noir, in true Noir fashion, blithely ignores Peter’s statement and settles on seizing the car seats in a death grip, just shy of tearing the cushions from where they’re attached. Porker hovers just adjacent to him with a sort of mild concern.

“Cars are a universal constant,” Miles offers, in an attempt to mollify his terror. “I think if three separate universes have invented them, something must be right.”

“Actually,” Peni pipes up. “These gas-driven cars are much more dangerous than the light rail systems we use. I was reading up on this; the mortality rate of automobile accidents is–”

Peter shushes her aggressively just as Noir lets out a keening, distressed sound from the back of his throat, vaguely akin to that of a wounded animal.

“I’m gonna die, ‘m gonna die,” he bemoans. Miles struggles not to laugh as his Brooklyn accent becomes thicker with panic, because that feels slightly too mean. Noir thumps his head against the front seat, white-knuckled grip on the fabric tearing threads loose, and mumbles a stream of period-specific curses.

“Nobody is going to die, Peni, stop scaring him on purpose.” Peter adjusts the rearview mirror to level her a stern glare and is met with a cheeky grin. “It’s a three-hour drive, we will all be fine.”

“In my universe, car crashes don’t even kill anybody,” Porker offers. Noir just stares at him until he seems to physically shrink under the weight of his gaze. Miles thinks he might actually be shrinking in size.

__

By hour two in the car, Miles is fairly sure he’s one of the only people left awake. The afternoon sunlight is spilling into the windows, painting everything a soft velvety gold, and imparting with it a deep drowsiness. Peni had fallen asleep a while ago, her head resting on Gwen’s knee. Porker had claimed the other leg. He’s not quite sure about Noir, but Gwen makes eye contact with him from the front row and gives him a tired thumbs-up.

This is nice, Miles thinks to himself, in a losing battle with his own exhaustion. Peter is humming a little tune under his breath as they drive, relaxed into his seat, occasionally glancing into the rearview mirror. It’s an odd tranquility that he never quite expects with the rest of the spiders. It always seems like when they’re together, the world has to be ending in some manner. Peace is a nice new look on them.

The towering skyscrapers of New York had thinned out into suburbs, and then into sparse silvery forests. Miles reaches blearily for his sun visor and squints at Gwen in the cracked mirror. She sticks her tongue out in response. The sun is painting her blonde hair bright gold, and Miles appreciates it silently as he leans back.

Yeah, he thinks to himself, slowly dozing off in the warm light. He could get used to this. The world not having to end to hang out. It's nice.

__

Miles has to drag Gwen out of the car when they arrive. She groans and punches him in the thigh on reflex, and then apologizes by carrying him to the doorstep.

It doesn’t actually hurt. Miles is pretty sure that the bruise is already disappearing. But it’s the principle of the matter.

Peter struggles with the set of keys Aunt May had given him as Noir begins to scale the side of the house, keen on gaining a vantage point. The air is still, with a gloss of not-quite ice staining the roof shingles silver and making the grass dewy with melted frost. Thick bushes of poinsettias, so brilliantly red that Miles can’t tell if they’re real or fake, surround the door as Peter finally manages to kick it open.

The air is chillingly thin within and smells vaguely of old cinnamon brooms. Peter shouts at all of them to take their shoes off before attempting to walk along the walls. The home is lovingly tidy, the walls paneled with fake rustic cabin wood, and the December fog casts a pale gray light over everything. Gwen and Porker make a team effort to hold Peni up to the roof, just so she can have the same birds-eye view as everyone else.

Peter seems to fall into place perfectly within the house. There’s a gentle, wistful familiarity in his movements as he traces the art pieces still hung up on the wall, carefully adjusting their frames to be perfectly oriented. The air is still bitingly cold inside, so he drags a few damp parcels of firewood to the ashen fireplace and sets to work creating a home out of an almost-familiar house.

Noir clings to the window on the second story and stands there silently until Peter finally takes pity on him and opens it from the inside. “The door works, you know,” he intones, as Noir tumbles through. Despite his best attempts at appearing unaffected his shoulders still shiver from the cold.

“Don’t trust doors,” he mumbles back, straightening out his ruffled coat collar.

Peter opens his mouth, decides that this strange argument is not worth it, and closes it again. He, truthfully, does not remember the last time he’s seen Noir walk through a door normally, so he can’t really argue on that piece.

The kids are all huddled around the fireplace like a pack of penguins when Peter comes back downstairs, with Noir crawling on the ceiling in trepidation. He’s still wearing his mask, for some mysterious reason, and his trenchcoat falls like a curtain as he stands upside-down while gazing around.

“I surveyed the area,” he reports to Peter solemnly, like they’re in an active war zone and not on vacation. “Forest and more forest, thin spacings of cabins along the river bend; shouldn’t be a pro’lem unless they make it one.”

“Thank you, Noir.” Peter pats him on the shoulder, awkwardly since he’s still upside-down. He’s not quite sure how Noir acquired his constant, warlike vigilance, but it tends to deeply concern him. It remains near the top of the ‘Spider-Dad To-Do List’, a name that Peter had not chosen, alongside Teach Peni what a CD is and Convince Gwen to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. 

“Noir!” Peni crows, and then grabs the tail of his trenchcoat and pulls until he lets himself fall onto the floor. Peter watches him get swarmed with spiderlings fondly, before turning to rearrange the house, still painfully familiar despite it all.

The evening light is starting to peer through the windows. Peter wonders if the nearby town is the same in both universes; he hopes so because he remembers the flautas from the local taqueria were divine.  

“I’m getting dinner,” he calls, temporarily distracting the dogpile on the floor. “What’s the move?”

Miles and Gwen argue over a share of tostadas, Peni fish tacos, and Porker fajitas. Noir says nothing, and then nothing again, and then with a fair amount of shaking from Peni, he finally relents to one side of corn salad. 

The air is still and quiet when Peter steps out, feeling strangely out of place without his suit. Up beyond the bend in the gravel road, the town lights are achingly similar to his universe, so much that it makes his ribs hurt. It’s like a worn-out postcard brought to life, permanently tucked into some of his most beloved memories. Bright, speckled strings of light. Aunt May’s enormous puffer jacket that vastly outsized him. The great menorah in the snow-clouded plaza. 

They had arrived too early for Chanukah this year, but just in time for the first snowfall. Peter breathes warmth onto his stiff fingertips, a strange burning nostalgia resting just beneath his diaphragm. The last time he had returned here, in his own universe, he was 16 years old. Spider-Man for one year.

Now it is Miles’ turn to have been Spider-Man for one year, and isn’t that something special? The first Spider-Man to evolve with a support system. It is quite a sight to see. The entire group had collectively and silently agreed that Miles would be the most well-adjusted, supported, loved Spider-Man that the multiverse had ever seen. Peter smiles fondly at this thought as he strolls down the ever-familiar street, his breath creating little puffs of steam in the air. 

Oh, what a wonder it is, to no longer be alone. The last time he had been here, in a parallel world, he had been 16 and terrified, the loss of his Uncle Ben still tearing into his side like a festering wound, clinging to Aunt May’s arm. Now he’s returned; 19 years older, debatably wiser, and most importantly, bearing this universe’s newest Spider-Man under his wing. 

He's still similar to Peter. Painfully similar; flighty, nervous. Still green and inexperienced. Always, always grieving someone, because to be Spiderman is to grieve, and he hates how it has to be true. But at least this time, he’s not alone.

Chapter Text

There are three bedrooms upstairs, and yet for some reason, every single member of their 6-person troupe ends up trying to fall asleep in a large pile on the living room floor.

Leftover food wrappers on stained paper plates are littered across the floor of the living room. Dinner had been a successful feat, somehow, which is a miracle unto itself. The fireplace had reduced from a roar to a lazy flickering over the course of the evening as Peter could feel the energy in the room slowly draining out. It is slightly unclear, however, when exactly he had ended up asleep face-down on the floor.

The close contact with other spiders has Peter’s spider-sense on a constant, soothing buzz, low and sleepy as they try to rearrange themselves into a comfortable position. Gwen is laying directly on Miles’ stomach and Peni has somehow managed to sprawl out on top of them both, her head wedged against Peter’s arm. Porker is curled into a tiny little ball of pink by Peni’s shoulder.

It’s only 8 pm, but the car trip had drained the soul out of all of them. Everyone except Noir, who is on an (unnecessary) night watch on the couch, had had the same idea to crash on the rug at the same time, and now Peter is being suffocated by the weight of three children and one pig.

Noir is a sweetheart in the most roundabout and oblique way possible. Which is, to him, sitting ominously in the dark while everyone else sleeps. With the most extreme spider characteristics out of all of them, including but not limited to natural webbing, tapetum lucidum, and actual, literal fangs, he seems to resign himself to just stand watch the entire night. For reasons that are beyond Peter.

"Noir," he hisses under his breath. "A little help here."

Noir, with an exceptionally terrifying slow head turn that looks like something straight out of a horror movie, shrugs at him. His goggles flash mysteriously even though there isn't a prominent light source. 

He’s not the only one of them who’s taken on spider behavior as part of their helm. His silent, vaguely unnerving action pairs well with Peni, who is 14 years old and has been psychically linked to a spider for the majority of her brain development. Fortunately, it means they get along like a house fire, and are the most terrifying sibling pair known to the multiverse. Unfortunately, it puts them on the same spider-esque wavelength, and this cooperation subsequently gives Peter terrible headaches. 

He loves them, truly, he does. But they hiss at him.

It isn’t even on purpose, and Noir at least has the decency to avoid it when he can. Peter nudges Peni awake with his free elbow and isn’t even surprised when she peels her lip back and hisses without opening her eyes. It had been alarming the first few times, but he figures growing up with a spider as one of your only friends would do that to someone.

If he thinks too hard about that he’s going to get sad.

“We have rooms, you know,” he says to the Peni-shaped blob, who is trying to roll herself into Noir’s coat to escape. Noir lets out a vaguely inhuman rumbling sound and lifts his arm to make room for her.

“Peterrr,” Miles whines, hitting the space next to him blindly with his left hand. He misses Peter and instead hits Porker in the face. “Be quiet.”

Peter gives up on Peni after she hisses a second time. “This can’t be comfortable.”

Gwen makes a noise of disagreement, which is largely inaudible. “Rrugh,” she says, very coherently, and then pulls Miles closer into a strangling hug, her limbs sticking onto his hoodie.

There is a truth to it. Peter just seems to sleep better when he’s near them, soothed just by their presence. The low-level buzz of the spider-sense in reaction to another spider is like a comforting hum of white noise. But sleeping in one giant pile on the living room rug seems a little ridiculous. 

“Let the kids sleep, B,” Porker mumbles, rolling over onto his back. Noir huffs, a neutral sound of assent. When it becomes clear that nobody is moving, Peter sighs and looks skyward.

“I’ll bring the pillows down,” he finally relents and is met with a chorus of tired agreement. Noir carefully extricates himself from Peni’s grip (with much protest) and slips onto the ceiling to help Peter. 

He looks exceptionally ominous as a black shape moving in the dark, but this effect is mitigated by the enormous pile of pillows he’s carrying across the ceiling.

Noir drops the blankets and pillows directly on the tangle of sleeping kids (and one Peter Porker), prompting a ruckus of sleep-bleary protests. They rearrange accordingly, Gwen and Miles claiming a veritable mountain of pillows, Porker settling on top of the blanket, and Peni stretching out to cover as much space as possible with her head against Gwen’s leg. Peter settles down on the edge of the rug closest to the fireplace. On the opposite side, Noir leans against the couch, his hat lowered over his eyes. Without getting up, he shoots a net of black webbing at the light switch that miraculously manages to turn it off.

“G’night,” Peter calls out blearily into the dark.

“Mgh,” is the general response he gets, which is good enough.

The kids must really be dead on their feet if there’s no argument and kerfuffle after. Gwen mumbles something in her sleep and wraps her free arm around Peni unconsciously, dragging her into the pillow pile. Porker has a little trail of Z’s bubbling from his head.

From the other side of the room, Noir is still sitting up against the couch with the full mask-glasses ensemble and trenchcoat, making his face invisible in the dark. Peter watches the moonlight cast frosted shapes on the rug, waiting patiently for the last person to rest. It takes a while, but the low motorcycle-rumble purr from Noir’s throat signals when he has fully fallen asleep. 

Finally secure, Peter puts his face toward the fire, now barely a pile of red coals, and has his first dreamless sleep in months.

__

Gwen and Miles are the first to wake up, somehow. Peter is always astounded by their boundless energy. He has a rude awakening when Miles accidentally kicks him in the face while trying to quietly creep out of the mountain of pillows.

“Sorry,” he stage-whispers. 

Peter is pretty sure Gwen kicks him on purpose, though. Betrayal.

They need groceries, so he has to drag the two to the local Safeway for a run early in the morning. The other three are very visually conspicuous and also difficult to wake up. He had felt bad about waking up Noir, who only seems to get around 4 hours of sleep per night. Peni had hissed at him again when he prodded her. Porker had barked.

Gwen and Miles make a formidable duo, apparently both on the battlefield and at the grocery store. Peter stands next to the checkout line with their cart, half-asleep, as they seem to run a relay between the aisles, jumping onto the shelves to retrieve items. How they have this much energy at 7:30 in the morning is a mystery to everyone in the store, but at least it means that the movement Peter has to do is minimal. 

When they return, with Gwen and Miles competing to see who can carry the most bags at once (Gwen wins), the house seems to slowly stir awake. Peter breathes the fireplace back to life and opens the curtains, letting hazy overcast light filter into the living room. The sun barely penetrates the thick cloud layer developing above the treeline, and his breath condenses against the window when he gets too close. Signs of snow.

Peni and Porker both make a beeline to the kitchen to tear apart the grocery bags. Miles and Gwen are in the process of trying to give Noir the most abhorrently flavored junk that they can find. It makes Peter fear for Noir’s life. 

They had both come to the realization in the grocery store that Noir is the closest thing they’re going to get to ‘giving a medieval peasant McDonald's Sprite’, whatever the hell that means. Peter makes an apt comparison to letting babies lick lemons, and Noir has the grace to only look a little offended at being compared to a baby.

“Here,” Miles says eagerly, holding up a sour Skittle. Noir squints at it– or presumably squints since he’s wearing both his goggles and a black medical mask. 

It is a minor improvement from the perpetual spider mask. At least his haircut (which Peter personally thinks looks like was done with a dull chainsaw, but he keeps that opinion to himself) is visible. It sticks out in spiky, uneven clumps from beneath his goggles, making him look somewhat like a sea urchin.

“You want me to eat this,” Noir says blankly, taking the bite-sized piece of hell in his hand. Peter had admonished Miles and Gwen exactly once before deciding that his quota for being responsible is done and he’s allowed to be entertained now. He had stopped them from giving Noir Warheads, which feels like a very Responsible Adult thing to do, and now he’s tired of being the bigger person.

“Why is it…” Noir pauses, inspecting the Skittle with understandable amounts of trepidation. “Bright. Um. Yellow?”

“Orange,” Gwen says, but they’re close enough that she nods anyway. 

Noir puts three at a time into his mouth. And promptly regrets it. Miles is mercilessly filming the entire thing as he chokes and keels over, sputtering.

“I’ve been poisoned,” he gets out, curling up on the floor. Gwen laughs so hard at him that Peter is briefly afraid that she might choke as well.

Peni and Porker are in the kitchen trying to arrange the groceries, but Peter suspects that they’re eating more than they’re putting away. Peni had been especially excited about the forecasted snow. Peter had asked her why, exactly, when she lived in New York.

“Global warming,” she had said solemnly, and Peter had winced. So much for hope for the future.

Aunt May’s house is almost exactly like how he remembers it from his world, with a few small readjustments. The picture hanging in the hallway is on the left side instead of the right. The little potted Norfolk Island pine is in the kitchen instead of the living room. The familiar perfume of oranges is overpowered by the smell of stale cinnamon brooms.

Peter feels simultaneously like he belongs and also like a home intruder. Aunt May eventually sold her winter home back in his universe, but he still faintly remembers clinging to the hem of her cardigan as she brought him to visit for the holidays. It's achingly familiar, down to the woodgrain in the walls and the worn-out carpeted stairs. MJ had always talked about how wonderful the home would be for kids.

She wasn’t wrong, Peter thinks, as he watches Gwen and Miles climb up the walls to chase Noir. Miles gets tangled into one of the window curtains, which trips Gwen, which successfully gets Noir to fall, and they all end up on the floor in one fitfully laughing pile. From behind him, he hears Peni shriek, before she’s running past him to plaster her face to the window. 

“It’s snowing!” She shouts, and immediately everyone stumbles over themselves to get to the window, even though all of them are New Yorkers who see snow every year. True to the forecast’s words, a faint sheen of snow is starting to gather on the eaves, covering the window with condensation as they all lean in close. Noir has Peni on one shoulder and Porker on the other to allow them a better view. Peter huffs a quiet laugh as he backs away to let Miles crowd in, leaning against the opposite wall.

Yes, MJ was right, Peter thinks fondly. The home is almost made for kids.

Chapter Text

“Your world is…” Noir pauses, halfway for dramatic effect but mostly to find his words. “Very loud to my eyes.”

Miles holds up the string of ceramic lights with a flourish, lifting it to Noir’s face. The baubles reflect white light into the glass of his goggles. “What color is this?”

“Um. Ow?”

They’re in one of the little shops nestled into the nearby town, as Peter searches the shelves for a snow shovel. There’s only the faintest dusting of powder on the rooftops and streets, but he insists that more snow is coming, which means they’re all bundled up and headed into town for another brief shopping trip.

Gwen is holding Peni on her shoulders to let her peer at the top shelf. From Peni’s cat-eared backpack, Porker dangles out in a remarkably impressive imitation of a stuffed animal.

“Miles,” she calls, swinging her feet so hard with excitement that she barely avoids kicking Gwen in the face. “Look!”

She’s holding a Mariah Carey Merry Christmas vinyl triumphantly in the air. Miles nods at it approvingly, unwilling to quash Peni’s interest in vintage technology.

“I’ve only seen these things in museums!” Peni bounces excitedly until Gwen wobbles and has to set her back down on the ground. Miles watches her follow Peni on her warpath deeper into the store.

From next to him, Noir drags his hat down until it dislodges his goggles. “Are there always this many colors durin’ the holidays,” he says, sounding deeply pained, his voice muffled by the fabric.

“Yeah.” Miles feels a little bad for him. He stands out like a spotlight in the middle of the tiny ornately-decorated store and the ceiling is low enough that if he jumps he’d probably hit his head. Every wall is clipped from roof to floor in brilliant coils of Christmas lights, menorah candles, and glass ornaments that reflect the light into shards. It’s enough to give Miles a little bit of a headache; he can’t imagine how Noir is managing. “What do they look like in your ‘verse?”

“Gray,” he says flatly. “It’s gray during the holidays. And cold.”

Okay, yeesh. 

Noir is starting to look kind of bad. His left hand had clenched into a fist about three minutes ago and has yet to unclench, which means he is in grievous amounts of pain but not acknowledging it. Miles takes his arm to guide him through the store while he hides behind his hat. 

“Gwen,” he stage-whispers. Gwen turns around, one hand on top of Peni’s head to keep her from running off, the other with Peni’s beloved vinyl. Peter is lost somewhere among the dangling glass decorations and burning candles. “Can we hurry up? I think Noir is about to die.”

“I am not gonna die,” Noir says, from behind his anti-color shield of a hat. Gwen squints at them both.

“He is going to die,” Miles attests.

“I think Peter is almost done.”

From somewhere further down the aisle, he hears Peter make a little uh oh noise, and then the sound of metal falling.

Very promising.

__

They leave the store with one slightly used snow shovel, a coil of Christmas lights, one Mariah Carey vinyl, and a massive purpling bruise on Peter’s left cheek. It’s disappearing before their eyes, but he still looks deeply unhappy.

The perpetual tension lines between Noir’s eyebrows are still there, but his hand has unclenched. Only low-level amounts of agony, then. Miles considers this a net victory.

“We don’t have a record player, Peni,” Gwen points out. The snow is beginning to fall in little drifts, and it dusts her hair like powdered sugar. Peni, three steps ahead and proudly holding her vinyl, shakes her head vehemently.

“That’s not the point,” she says haughtily, even though it is, in fact, the point. 

It’s just about lunchtime and nobody is willing to go back home yet, so Peter leads them to a small café down the street with bright twinkling lights on the eaves. The snow is really starting to come down in thick powdery torrents by then, and Peter bemoans his fate of digging their car out of the snow.

“Is winter like this in your universe?” Miles asks Porker, who seems to be thoroughly enjoying hanging out in Peni’s backpack.

“Only when it is comedically convenient,” he responds.

“There is no winter in my universe,” Peni pipes in.

“Once I almost bled to death in weather like this,” Noir says gravely, and that successfully stops the conversation. Peter has the look on his face that he makes when he’s adding another bullet point to his Spider-Dad To Do List.

They all order coffee (except Peni and Miles, who are both very indignant about not being allowed to) and lunch. Noir is once again verbally thrashed by Peni for not getting anything to eat. Gwen is once again verbally thrashed by Peter for drinking black coffee at 1 pm as a replacement for sleep. Very typical lunchtime conversation.

Peni manages to bully Noir into taking half of her avocado and grilled cheese sandwich, which Miles thinks is deeply impressive. Peter has yet to find any victory in keeping the coffee away from Gwen. 

The weather outside is half blizzard-like by 2 pm. Noir sweeps up a corner of his trenchcoat to let Miles huddle under since Peni and Gwen are both steadfastly determined to pretend they are immune to the cold. Porker disappears into Peni’s backpack and refuses to come back out. Peter, a tried-and-true New Yorker, has no qualms about wading through the snow in sweatpants and a pajama shirt. 

Noir, for his part, looks unbothered. The wind just makes his coat billow dramatically. 

Gwen and Peni bicker like the world's most annoying siblings on the way back on what to do with her new vinyl. Miles suggests that she hang it up like a wall decoration. Noir offers to get a record player from his dimension and is promptly shot down because, a) once Noir goes into his dimension it is hard to get him back out again, and b) they all know he will be stealing in order to obtain one.

The argument peters out when they make it back to the cabin because it's warm, warm, and everyone piles back into the living room around the fireplace like a cluster of cats. Miles lays directly on Gwen’s stomach and ignores her grumble of protest. His hair is going to be wet with melted snow soon, but that is a problem for future Miles to deal with.

Noir leaves for a walk in the snow, to ‘clear his mind’. Peter sighs heavily because they all know damn well that he’s going to be patrolling the house as if they’re going to war, but lets him go. 

“We are not falling asleep on the floor again,” Peter warns the cluster of kids (and Peter Porker) on the carpet. “Up with you. Get up, all of you, I’ll turn the radiator on.”

There’s a chorus of unhappy mumbling. Gwen reaches both hands out to stick to Peni and Miles, so Peter just picks them all up as a cluster and deposits them on the couch.

“Call if you need me. I will be rescuing our van,” Peter declares, and then vanishes outside with his slightly-used snow shovel.

Porker unzips himself from Peni’s backpack and sticks his head out with a dramatic gasp for air.

Peni is hellbent on reverse-engineering a record player from scratch, and Miles does not doubt that she can do it, but questions if she should. Porker is all too happy to peer out from his backpack perch and encourage her in unwise decisions, which leaves Miles and Gwen still sitting on the couch, damp with snowmelt and exhausted. Well, Miles is probably the only one exhausted. Gwen is still slightly jittery from caffeine.

“This is nice,” Gwen says, apropos to nothing. Miles glances at her from the corner of his eye and lets out an affirming hum. “I, uh, appreciate you guys.”

All attention is now directed to her. Gwen only has a Feeling once every two weeks, and usually, that feeling is anger. “Oh?”

Gwen sighs and drags her hands down her face dramatically. From twenty feet away in the kitchen, Peni and Porker debate over how vinyl is read, shooting back and forth rapid-fire with terms that Miles thinks they have to have made up on the spot. “I’m trying to do the emotions thing Peter tells me to do,” she says, with a touch of bile.

“The emotions thing,” Miles repeats lightly, grinning. 

“Yeah,” she grumbles. “The emotions thing.”

“So what’s the emotion of the week?”

Gwen makes a face at him. “Ugh. Don’t make me say it.

“I’m going to make you say it.”

She rolls her eyes and groans, longsuffering. Ha. Take that, Gwen's emotional constipation. “Fine. Happiness, or whatever. Happy?”

Miles hums with glee. 

“Don’t make that face.” Gwen plasters her hands over her eyes so she can pretend she doesn’t see him. “I know you’re still making that face. Stop making it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Miles says, knowing exactly what she’s talking about.

“I regret having a feeling. I’m never having one again.”

Chapter Text

“What,” Peter says flatly.

Noir peels his hand away from his coat, where it’s inky black. He’s standing in the doorway, back from his ‘walk’ with a newly acquired switchblade in his left hand. “Oh,” he says, apologetically. “Sorry. I got stabbed.”

Peter stares at him. “What.”

He puts one bloody hand up. “I got st–”

“No, I heard you the first time.” Peter approaches Noir slowly, and Noir nervously takes matching steps back. “That was more of a question of why. Or, how. Why is more important.”

“Oh.” Noir puts his hand down. “Um, a civilian was tryna’ rob me. But I didn’t… wanna get robbed.”

“So you opted to get stabbed? ” 

Noir throws both hands up this time, and ink-dark drops fly from his fingertips. The blade trickles blood all over his arm. “I thought we were keepin’ a low profile!”

Peter makes a wildly undignified squawking sound with the back of his throat. He herds Noir into a dining table chair, where he slouches, looking disgruntled. Not that Noir being stabbed isn’t commonplace, but they’re on vacation! He isn’t even in his own very knife-happy universe!

“Coat off,” he demands, and Noir complies with much grumbling. “Why do you have the knife?”

“He left it in,” he says as if it’s obvious. “It’s mine now.”

“You let him stab you and then run away?”

“Uh, yeah.” Noir has the decency to look at least a little embarrassed, though it’s hardly visible with his mask still on. Peter disinfects the wound with more aggression than needed.

“Why didn’t you fight him?” Out of all of them, Noir is the best at hand-to-hand combat, simply by the virtue of constantly getting socked in the face with no warning. “I know damn well you could’ve.” 

“I thought civvies can’t do that.” Noir reaches to scratch the wound and is promptly swatted away by Peter. “Ain’t it illegal or something? I mean, I coulda’ scrapped him, but he was a scrawny little guy, y’know? Didn’t mean much harm.”

“You’re also a scrawny little guy!” Peter covers the wound with butterfly bandages, and then stares at him, flummoxed. “And he meant lots of harm! To your organs!” Noir makes a slightly indignant sound.

“I didn’t get that stabbed,” he argues valiantly, which fails to impress Peter. He drops the switchblade on the table and it creates an ugly splatter on Aunt May’s plastic table covering. “Organs are all there. It’s healin’ already.”

Peter just shakes his head. “You,” he says sternly. “Are out of commission for tonight.”

“But–!”

“No buts!” He sticks his finger against Noir’s face. “Out. Of. Commission. Miles?”

Miles sticks his head out from the stairwell. “Hi! What did you–”

His eyes go huge and moon-shaped at Noir’s blood-covered hand. “Did he get stabbed?”

“No,” Noir denies, at the same time Peter says, “Yes.” He glares at Noir until he shuts his mouth guiltily. “He can’t make dinner tonight, so bundle up the others. We’re trying ourselves.”

“Okay!” Miles, the blessed kid, doesn’t seem to have any qualms about it. He happily swings upstairs to tell the rest of the spiders as Noir covers his face and groans.

“I fear for this house,” he says gravely.

“I’m not that bad of a cook.” Peter gives him an offended side glance. “Also, you’re stabbed. ”

“Hardly!” This is the most words Peter has ever heard Noir say in one conversation, and it’s because of his indignation at not being allowed to cook after getting gutted. He tries to stand up and is promptly webbed to the chair by Peter and Gwen, who are just starting to descend the stairs.

“What’re we making?” She asks. The look she gives Noir is entirely triumphant. 

__

Noir’s mask is off. 

Peter is very conspicuously not looking at him, because he knows from experience that he hates it when people stare at his unmasked face. The kid looks just like him anyway; except younger, way younger (He’s twenty! Not even legal drinking age!) and mottled with a patchwork of scars. It’s not their first time seeing his face (and hadn’t that been an adventure), but it’s still a rare thing, like seeing a unicorn or something.

He can tell, with a little bit of fondness, that the other kids are also trying their best to not stare. Almost succeeding, too. Peni is holding a bag of shredded cheese and reading the ingredients with laser precision to avoid looking in Noir’s direction. 

It’s… weird. But not bad weird. Nice weird.

Noir just watches them try their best at making macaroni and cheese with mild trepidation, hands halfway raised around his face like he needs to remind himself that he still has one. 

There is a very deep sense of honor Peter holds that Noir trusts them enough to have a face with them. It’s less about the actual features– they all know he’s Peter Benjamin Parker –and more about learning how to put down the damn heroism for a second to be a normal person. Scary stuff. Gwen and Miles had the virtue of learning it from their secret identities, but Peni and Noir have no work-life separation. 

Peni had been unwilling to go without her SP//dr mech for at least two months after they’d established their first interdimensional contact. She later admitted it was because she wasn’t quite ready to be just a person with them. The suit is something terrifying in itself– she started piloting it when she was nine! –and Peter is silently glad that she’s willing to be a 14-year-old for a little bit. Heaven knows she needs it.

Peter wonders if Peni and Noir have had friends before, like, ever. They genuinely don’t seem to know how to hit pause on the spider-hero persona. Noir hasn’t even quite gotten past the whole name barrier. It makes him kind of sad.

Noir isn't like them. He's a street pugilist through and through. He doesn’t have the merit of technology or goobers or whatnot, just the ability to take hits and hit back harder, and being tough as rocks unfortunately means he's also horrendously bad at having emotions or being normal about anything.

He turns an eye toward Noir, who’s picking the edge of his glove, his eyes narrowed in thought. For one of his first times being maskless, he's handling it startlingly well.

There are the obvious remnants of old fights in his face and hands, which are even more visible when he’s maskless. Both his ears are cauliflowered, and there’s a thick scar running deep under his eye and curving until it splits his earlobe. One of his eyebrows is dented from a strangely healed orbital fracture. He’s got bony knuckles and wrists that are ever-so-slightly out of alignment, and a bottom lip that’s been bit through one too many times to recover fully from.

“Benjamin,” Noir says, out of nowhere.

Miles' eyes dart toward him curiously, and then hastily he draws his gaze back. “Huh?”

“That’s… one of my names.” The gray of his skin seems to turn a little darker. He seems to pause to think, working the leather of his gloves apprehensively. “If ya wanted to call me, uh, somethin’ else. Other than my fake name.”

A name. A real name. Peter is giddy. “Benjamin,” he repeats, delightedly. “Benji?”

Noir– Benji crosses his arms and glances off to the side, eyes closed. “Sure,” he says. He looks deeply embarrassed.

Benji! A real-life person's name! Vulnerability and emotions! He’s so proud of him! 

Peter beams so hard that his face feels sore. His spiderlings are getting so good at the emotions thing! Maybe he doesn't suck total rocks at mentoring.

“I like that name,” Miles decides, loudly, and then immediately drops the entire box of pasta noodles onto the floor. 

Benji looks relieved to be spared the attention as they all focus on the newer, more pressing issue.

__

Peter assigns Peni to make sure Benji doesn’t get up, much to his despair. Peni, to his benefit, sleeps more than she watches him. Peter is sure that Benji can slip by if he tries to. He’s certainly sure Noir can, at least, because he barely knows anything about Benji. But apparently, Peni’s presence alone forces him to sit there in his chair, staring up at the ceiling murderously.

“Please let me go,” he says to Peter for the thousandth time that hour.

“I’m not in charge.” Peter makes a vague gesture toward Peni’s dozing form on the table. Benji scowls at him (which Peter can see now!) but makes no move to wake her up, and instead sinks deeper into his slouch.

Hooray for emotional manipulation forcing him to stay down. Thank you, Peni. 

Peni is, in equal parts, teenage drama and trauma. All of them are. Aside from the whole child soldier thing (seriously, Peter might have to kill someone in her dimension), the kid has her fair share of bad sleep habits. Gwen and Peni combined probably sleep a total of 7 hours a week. If he adds Benji in it might go up to 8.

His kids are insane. 

Wait.

Peter shakes his head violently.

Okay, whatever. He can dissect that later. Preferably with MJ. 

__

Peter had sent Peni upstairs after a bit because the kid obviously needed rest and he would prefer it to not be on the hard kitchen table. Miles had swapped out in her stead and is patiently drawing marker murals in his sketchbook.

Benji had eventually fallen asleep, presumably to divest more energy toward healing the stab wound. Peter knows he’s really asleep and not just closing his eyes to pretend when the quiet motorcycle-like rumble starts to emit from his chest, a little like a napping cat. Weird spiders and their weird inhuman habits.

Miles jerks his head up, gasps, and then immediately tries to unhinge Benji’s jaw from his face.

There is briefly a lot of chaos.

“Pfh–!?” Benji startles awake from the force of the teenager trying to pry his face open. “Wh–??”

“Miles!” Peter drops the spoon he’s stirring the pasta with panic. “What’s happening?”

“Can you breathe?” Miles shouts directly into Benji’s face.

Benji slaps Miles’ hands away, still trying to gain his bearings. Once it is established that yes, he can breathe, Miles finally relaxes and sits back down on his heels.

“Why?” Benji finally gets out, sputtering.

“I thought you were dying?” Miles doesn’t sound too sure himself. “Your breathing sounded weird so I thought? Your lungs were broken?”

Benji’s miserably irritated expression visibly gentles when Miles explains himself. At least he isn’t trying to remove Benji’s jaw for fun. “My breathing’s fine,” he says, rubbing a hand across his face. “Weird how?”

“Like, it was rumbling? And we learned about lung obstructions. So I thought you might’ve been dying.” Miles is beginning to look slightly embarrassed.

“Oh,” Peter says out loud. “That’s just his purring, don’t worry.”

Two pairs of eyes swivel toward him at once.

“His what?” 

“My what?”

Oh. There is suddenly a lot of staring at Peter. Slightly more awkwardly, he crouches to pick up the dirty pasta-stirring spoon from the floor.

“His… purring?” Has he made a mistake? “Like… the sound he makes sometimes?” He feels like he’s made a mistake, for some reason.

Miles is entirely slack-jawed. Benji just looks horrified.

“You purr?” Miles shrieks, and then grabs both of Benji’s shoulders to thrash him back and forth. “And you never told me? What? What!!”

“I– no?” Benji is struggling to form coherent sentences between the being thrashed back and forth and also the sheer unadulterated shock in his features. Does the kid really not hear himself when he sleeps? “I don’t– what.”

Like clockwork, his throat is humming, and Benji just stares at himself in horror before looking back up at Peter.

“Uh, sorry.” Smooth, Parker. It was probably definitely a mistake. Benji’s face is simultaneously turning a darker and lighter shade of gray like the blood can’t decide which direction to flow.

“Why is this happening,” he says, with genuine dread in his voice. “Peter, how do I make it stop.”

“Beats me.” Peter stirs the pasta to avoid eye contact. “You always make that sound when you sleep. Figured it was your own little spider thing.”

“Spiders don’t purr!” Benji sinks back into his chair, looking devastated. It’s kind of funny, but Peter is nice enough to not laugh at his crisis. The buzzing sound returns twice as loud, and he groans and drags his hands across his face in anguish.

“Holy shit, he sounds like a cat,” Miles hisses, with unbridled glee. “Oh my God.”

“Language,” Peter and Benji both chorus at the same time.

“Gwen!” Benji’s eyes go round with panic. “Gwen, come down, oh my God, Gwen–”

“Peter,” he pleads, despairingly.

Peter shrugs, only feeling vaguely guilty for whatever hell is going to be inflicted on him soon, and focuses back on the pasta.

__

Everyone is utterly thrilled. Except for Benji, who looks like he’d rather be stabbed again than endure another minute of spiderling harassment. Peni had shrieked with delight and is now putting something stethoscope-like against Benji’s throat, intent on finding a root cause, and the entire time Benji is buzzing like a motorcycle left idle. Peter knows that he only purrs when he’s comfortable, so he doesn’t tell the kids to back off yet.

He’s putting the pasta in bowls as Peni leans over the table, holding up a glowing screen. “It doesn’t look like a spider thing,” she tells Benji, who looks positively miserable. “Spiders don’t purr with their lungs anyway. It’s more like a mammalian thing that the bite brought out.” She’s kicking her feet excitedly and pointing at a diagram of a ribcage.

Benji plasters his hands over his face. “Stop tellin’ me,” he utters, with a low tremolo from his chest. It somehow thickens his Brooklynite accent. “This is terrible.”

It’s hilarious, but Peter mercifully holds back his laughter.

Eventually, he manages to peel all the kids off of Benji to get them to sit down for dinner. None of them complain, or start dying from food poisoning, so Peter considers it a net success. Even Benji, who’s had a perpetual tension line on his forehead ever since he woke up, looks mollified by the pasta. The power of carbohydrates to save the day.

“I want to purr.” Peni stares aggressively at Benji as if he can do anything about it, and she looks so genuinely upset that Peter feels the urge to use his Teenager Comforting Techniques. “Why can’t I purr.”

Benji stares back at her helplessly. 

“Sorry?” He sounds confused about what he’s apologizing for. Honestly, Peter’s also confused, because he's never heard him make the sound while awake. Maybe the name thing set him off. That thought makes him feel weirdly like a proud parent.

Uh oh.

Yeah, he really needs to talk to MJ. Tell her that yes, he does want kids, but he also accidentally acquired a bunch of them, kind of? One of whom is 20 years old.

Well, whoops.

That’s going to be a fun conversation.

Chapter Text

Peter is on Nightmare Watch for the night. He’s planning to call MJ in the morning, and that thought fuels him as he perches silently in the hall, half-dozing, listening to the ambient silence of the house. 

Nightmares are fairly standard spider business, and they tend to show up like clockwork. Tonight he’s particularly worried for Benji, who’s just tentatively breached the first barrier between spider-heroism and personhood. Benji is a treasure and, bless his heart, also an idiot. Every time he makes an emotionally sound decision he gets new bouts of nightmares like he’s having an allergic reaction to healthy life choices or something.

Benji’s standard reaction to anything with too many feelings or confrontations for him is to just straight book it, so Peter isn’t sure how well it’ll go over with him. He’s a sweet kid, more than you’d expect, but with the flightiness and resting heart rate of a hummingbird, and an omnipresent looming sense of dread that’s visible on his face. Peter is passively worried that one day he’ll just keel over and die from heart failure because he doesn’t seem to know how to put himself on pause for one stupid second. 

Porker, as the only other adult figure in the entire house (he doesn’t count Benji because of his incredible emotional constipation), is hovering in Peni and Gwen’s room, sleeping from the ceiling by a thread. He used to be a spider, however weird that thought is. Also on Nightmare Watch. They can’t seem to get enough Nightmare Watch because being a spider-hero means constant nightmares.

Miles had recurring dreams for the first eight months; always someone dying, usually his uncle, usually repeatedly, always ending with a world-class anxiety attack in the middle of the night. Standard stuff. Peter hates to see it in a teenager, though– he’s fifteen! 

Sometimes he privately wishes that Miles’ universe had waited maybe a few more years before inflicting the spider-standard life-changing traumatic events on him. Maybe until he was 15, at least, like Peter had been? Another year to try to adjust to the world? Does he really have to save the world when he can’t do trigonometry yet? He’s so, so young. It scares Peter sometimes. 

But damn everything, New York the damsel-in-distress city always needs saving, and this world’s Peter Parker had left it up to the kid. The best he can do is make sure he doesn’t die trying.

That doesn’t mean Peter can’t lament about how unfair it is. 

The air is remarkably still. Benji’s steady purr is like a motorcycle; Peter’s never heard him this loud before, and it seems to be lulling everyone to sleep, even him. Maybe the kids are alright for tonight. He rearranges his stuck hands into a more comfortable position, face leaning against the wall. It’s downright impossible to stay awake in the household, no matter how much he’s sure his perpetual insomnia will pull through. Between the warm hum of his spider-sense at proximity and Benji’s perpetual rumbling like a cat, the air seems thick and sleepy. 

Peter leans back on his heels until his back is stuck against the wall and allows himself to drift off into a quiet dream.

__

Two full nights of sleep in a row. Without melatonin! That has to be a record or something.

Peter peels his eyes open and immediately tumbles face-first off the wall onto the carpet. 

He forgot about that.

“Um. Good mornin’.”

Peter blinks blearily up at Benji, who’s staring at him on the floor. Only his eyes are visible, through a pair of atrocious, barely held-together wireframe glasses, and he squints at him.

“Mmrgh,” Peter greets back.

Behind him, Peni drags a disheveled Gwen out of their room, her blonde hair sticking up in tufts. “Rise and shine,” Peni crows, and then points accusingly at Benji. “Why are you up! You’re still stabbed!”

“Barely,” Benji grumbles, stepping over Peter’s form on the floor to head downstairs. His perpetual trenchcoat brushes over his face, billowing in an unknown breeze. “I’ll make breakfast.”

"No! You're not!"

Peni chases after him with violence, leaving a tired Gwen leaning against the doorframe, squinting at everything.

“Sleep well?” Peter hums.

“Surprisingly,” she says, still trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes. The growing hair on the buzzed side of her head is sticking straight up like a porcupine. “Better than I would’ve.”

“Same.” Peter’s not getting up from the floor. That’s way too much work. “Think it’s because of the spider-sense?”

Gwen is contemplatively quiet. It’s a little unusual. “Maybe,” she admits. “I sleep easier… you know. When I’m not alone.”

Ah. There it is. And she’s right– the constant, omnipresent fear of danger that forces them into a shallow sleep is less noticeable when they’re surrounded by the hum of familiarity. It's harder to attack 6 spider-people than it is to ambush one.

Gwen is making a marked effort to try the whole ‘being emotionally vulnerable’ thing. Peter is very proud of her. He knows she’s still grieving and he knows that his presence doesn’t help (he sees it on her face sometimes, that brief second of recognition that turns into pain, and sometimes he finds himself mirroring it), but she’s trying and so is he.

“Wake Miles up,” Peter finally says. “For the record, I do too. It's nice not being alone.”

__

Benji eats like he’s on death row. Very Great Depression-esque. He’s weird about food; he’ll refuse to even touch it unless he’s sure everyone’s eaten, and then he descends upon it like a harpy. The kid eats chicken bones and coffee grounds. He’ll eat damn right anything. Once, Porker had salted his coffee, and to everyone’s horror, he drained the entire cup without thinking and then later had to be checked for sodium poisoning. 

He was fine. But there’s just about nothing that will make him waste food. So he’s exempt from food-related hijinks for his safety.

Peni had somehow created a functioning record player from a dull sewing needle, pieces salvaged from a smashed toaster, and a Lazy Susan. She’s playing her treasured vinyl in the living room, scratchy Mariah Carey Christmas songs that skip every two beats and occasionally reverse without warning. It really sets the mood for the morning.

“So,” Peter says loudly, mostly just to hear himself talk. “Any plans for today?”

Right now Peter is watching Benji stare at their breakfast potatoes with murderous intent, his hands digging into the edge of the table. He must be hungrier than hell, but he’s just sitting there, vibrating on the spot, waiting until everyone else is done. It’s equal parts funny and worrying. He’s giving the table a stare that could melt iron. 

“Snow day,” Miles declares seriously, around a mouthful of eggs. “We have a snow day.”

“I don’t know what that entails,” Peni says. She’s holding a speared potato and absentmindedly prodding Benji’s hand like it’ll make him take it. He's clenching his hand into a fist to prevent her from succeeding. 

Gwen presses her hands together in a sprawl and looks at Peni with the gravitas of a funeral director. “We have to give Peni the best snow day ever,” she utters gravely. Peter rolls his eyes at the dramatics. “Miles.”

“Gwen.”

They nod solemnly, together. Peni looks baffled. Benji is still glued to the table with murder in his eyes.

“Hey.” Peter webs him on the shoulder to get his attention. “You’re not eating.”

Benji stares back at him owlishly. 

“Go.” Another web. “Eat.”

He kicks Peter’s leg under the table. He's straight-up shaking.

“This ain't the Great Depression.” Peter kicks his leg back. “Go on.”

Benji is still staring. A muscle in his jaw jumps, visible through his mask– he really is neurotic about food. "I'm not hungry," he says hoarsely, like a liar.

Peter huffs. "Okay. Eat to humor us, then."

The muscle in his jaw jumps again, but he stops shaking for long enough to stab through a potato with a fork with the force needed to eviscerate a man. He crams it into his mouth like he’s afraid it'll run away if he doesn’t eat it fast enough.

The rattly purr that rises from his throat sounds like a damn jet engine. Everyone cheers.

Chapter Text

Snow day!

Snow day!

Miles slings a snowball in Gwen’s direction and swings onto the house wall before she can turn around and retaliate.

He doesn’t remember the last time he’s had the time to have a snow day, between Visions Academy and Spider-Manning and secret identity shenanigans. Gwen slinks against the wall, murder in her eyes, and he yelps as he jumps to stick to the underside of the awning.

“Miles Morales,” she growls, in a predatory crouch. The snow is clumped to her eyelashes and mouth, and there’s a feral grin that she’s fighting to suppress.

“Me,” Miles says nervously, one hand in an escaping position against the edge of the overhang. 

The resulting scramble across the roof makes them both fall off.

Peni is staring at them with big eyes from through the window, hands pressed against the glass. He rolls up from the floor and waves at her, grinning, chunks of ice falling from where it had frozen to his hair. While he’s distracted, Gwen dunks melting snow into the back of his shirt.

Miles shrieks, and the chase begins anew.

While they’re busy slinging snow into each other’s hair, bouncing off the walls and tracking endless footprints across the roof, Peter is perched on the edge of the fence to supervise. In true New York fashion, he’s wearing a pair of fuzzy slippers and a white sweatshirt despite the biting cold, nursing a cup of black coffee. Benji peeks his head out of the door tentatively, his mask and goggles donned.

“...same old,” he mumbles disapprovingly, as Peni ducks out from under his trenchcoat, with Porker hanging from her arm. 

She’s suited in a huge puffer jacket and wades carefully through the snow, eyes huge with wonder. Benji takes the time to leap onto the roof and do his customary morning sweep of the area. Still unnecessary. 

Miles and Gwen are plowing a moat around the house in their chase, and Miles nearly bowls Peni over mid-swing as he tries to escape a well-aimed snowball. She squawks in indignation and stumbles back.

“Be nice,” Peter says boredly, not looking up from his coffee.

“Sorry, Peni,” Miles calls before he gets nailed square in the face. “Ow!”

Peter rubs his face as they start squabbling again, this time dragging Peni into the midst. Porker, despite being a presumably responsible adult with a job, is eagerly egging it on. 

Then, blessedly, his phone buzzes in his pocket. He breathes a quiet sigh of relief as he slings off the fence, landing delicately so his coffee doesn’t spill. “I’m taking a call,” he calls to the kids, who are not paying any attention whatsoever.

The warm air rushes against his face in a torrent of light. “Hey, MJ.” Peter shuts the door behind him and leans against the wall, pressing the phone against his cheek.

“Hiya.” Her voice is light and gentle, and Peter can feel himself grinning like a complete idiot. “How’s it holding up at Fort May?”

“Fairly well, actually.” He takes a second to glance out the window, where Miles appears to be trying to teach Peni what a snowman is. Benji’s footsteps are featherlight and barely audible on the rooftop, even with Peter’s enhanced hearing. “It’s really starting to feel like a home here. It’s like… my Aunt May’s house.”

My Aunt May, and that phrase feels strange and heavy on his tongue. “All the rooms are the same, except the couch is on the right side of the wall.” Peni is struggling to push a ball of snow that Porker is sticking out of. “The kids are settling in well.”

“Any issues?” MJ knows the standard theatrics of heroism. Peter listens as there’s a quiet shuffling on the other side of the line and imagines her at her desk doing paperwork while they’re calling. “Nightmares or such?”

“Ben– Noir got stabbed,” Peter says, to MJ’s rather affronted gasp. “Only a little stabbed, according to him. But it worked out well.”

“Getting stabbed worked out well?”

“Kid felt okay enough to be… you know, a person for a bit.” It’s hard to word it right, but he’s sure she’ll understand. It’s a nuance of heroes that she seems to know well. “Don’t think he’s gotten the chance. Gave us a name, MJ, can you believe it?”

And she does understand it. She just understands, all the weird mannerisms and jumpy secretiveness and every strange behavior that comes with people like him, and it makes Peter’s heart swell. She doesn’t ask for the name, just makes a little humming noise in the back of her throat. “Took him a bit under a year to get to the name barrier,” she says, and she doesn’t sound upset, just vaguely impressed.

“Tough kid to crack.” Peter smiles. “He’s got a pugilist’s mug. Serious cauliflower ears, and this terribly healed brow fracture. Can’t imagine his ‘verse is friendly to him.”

“Not with the stories he tells us,” May agrees. The shuffling increases in volume briefly before it stops, and Peter can imagine her spinning her chair around to face in the opposite direction while calling, giving him her full attention. “Still calling him kid?”

“Twenty, MJ. He’s twenty.” Peter stresses the words like they’re the end of the world. “That’s like, four five-year-olds in a row! He’s baby age!”

“You sound old,” she hums teasingly, and he makes a mock huff of offense. 

“They feel like…” Peter pauses, grimacing at how emotional it sounds even to his own ears. “Like family. I guess. Spider-family.”

MJ is silent for so long that Peter gets nervous. Then, finally, with a gentle sort of teasing in her tone, she says, “Man, that Miles really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

How is he supposed to respond to that? He makes an undignified sputtering sound, and MJ laughs, bright and delighted. Her laugh makes him dizzy to listen to, even after 20 years and half a married life. 

“You used to be so determined to run away from these feelings,” she says, voice lilting with affection, and it goes unspoken that she was part of it, part of the people he tried to disconnect from. Peter thinks to himself how much he was willing to let go for his Spider persona, how stupid he was to be willing to sacrifice this love for his heroics. Not her. Not this. And not his spiderlings. “Meeting those kids made you a softie.”

“All it took was a little disaster to the multiverse,” Peter says wryly, but MJ is still laughing and it makes it hard to do anything but smile. “...they’re really family, aren’t they?”

“You think so?” Her voice is gentle.

From outside, Benji appears in a cloud of snowdust that flecks white frost against his trenchcoat and is immediately felled by a well-aimed snowball. He collapses dramatically to the ground, clutching his chest, and Miles scrambles to grab his hat to adorn their snowman.

Peter hums a two-toned sound from the back of his throat. “I do.”

__

“Okay, now pull the yarn through the loop. No– the other loop, Pen. Ya just made that one.”

“They’re all the same loop!”

“The one on the other side.”

“We don’t learn topological Euclidean knot theory until 9th grade! I don’t know this!”

“I, uh, dunno what those words mean, but you’re stitchin’ into the wrong row.”

Benji is trying, with exceptional patience, to teach Peni how to knit a scarf using needles stolen from Aunt May’s guest bedroom. Peni, on her part, looks as if she has just fought a ball of yellow yarn and lost, loops of fiber stuck to her hair and shoulders. She’s very carefully working on the most incorrect positioning of knitting needles Peter can imagine. Benji's hands fly through the movements without looking as he leans over Peni’s shoulder, squinting at her work. “Other way. Yarn over the other way.”

Peni flings both hands up dramatically but puts them back down to follow Benji’s advice. 

Peter perches on the wall across from them, resting his chin on the heel of his hand. He can hear Miles and Gwen stumbling across the roof with noisy footsteps, still in the midst of their snow day. Faintly Porker’s hollering can also be heard.

“Yes, that’s– oh, that’s the wrong loop.”

Peni wails in frustration and Benji looks utterly helpless.

Family, Peter thinks, rolling the word around in his head like he’s trying to get a proper feel of it. It feels like this. Benji and Peni sit shoulder-to-shoulder, half-bickering like siblings, as he points to some mysterious mistake she had made three rows back and she balks at him. Gwen and Miles slide off the roof in a pile outside and Porker lands on top of them both with a loud squeak. 

Had he meant to find another family when the multiverse had rifted apart and dragged him through? Most certainly not.

“Right–! That’s right, don’t move it!” Peni whoops as she successfully makes a single correct stitch in her tangle of a scarf, and Benji has an exceptionally rare grin gracing his face.

Family, he decides, and it makes him feel all strange and warm. They’re family. He’s family.

Chapter Text

Dinner is a short but violent affair, namely because Benji is trying to make pan-fried haddock while the three kids do everything in their power to stop him. Porker had netted Peni to a chair to keep her from jumping at him, and she sits there in sulking frustration, her deeply tangled yellow scarf tied around her neck with her.

“The wound is closed,” Benji emphasizes, chopping a block of butter into thin slices. Peter can tell he’s averting his eyes to avoid Miles’ signature pleading stare. “Stop lookin’ at me.” 

“Three-day policy,” Gwen demands. “Three-day policy for puncture wounds.”

“Only for Class 2 wounds and above,” Benji sings back without a hitch.

Peter’s heard this familiar back-and-forth about a dozen times in the last month alone. Gwen is going to start arguing about the semantics of abdominal wounds, and then Benji is going to cite the 6-hour rule of thumb, and it is going to get precisely nowhere. He closes his eyes and tries his best to block out the incoming argument.

“–and that means any stab to the abdominal region is liable,” Gwen says. She’s starting to scale the wall to reach a more even eye-level height with Benji, who’s still fighting with his baked haddock. It is truly a feat that he can juggle dinner and argue with a 16-year-old at the same time. “Class 2 is the baseline in any major organ system!” She punctuates her sentence righteously by hitting the wall with her fist.

“But those are for civilians, Gwen,” Benji begins, dropping a breaded filet onto the pan with his free hand while gesturing wildly with the other. “Ya can’t hold a spider to civvie standards.”

“Hey, we have no evidence of antiseptic abilities in spiders yet,” Miles shouts, coming to Gwen’s defense, and Peter pinches the spot between his eyebrows and looks skyward for mercy.

“Spiders are more susceptible to fungal infections than the average arthropod,” Porker says, and Gwen whirls on Benji. 

“See! Abdominal punctures are Class 2 at least, even with spider-healing–”

Peter sighs, with so much middle-aged exhaustion injected into the sound that they pause to look at him.

“Kids,” he pleads. He is inclined to side with Gwen and Miles because they do have a 3-day stab wound policy, but the entry wound had been so clean and the patient (Benji) so stubborn that it is close to impossible to enforce that. He also is not willing to add fuel to the argument. “Please. After dinner.”

“Peter,” Miles complains.

“Peter’s just saying that so we don’t hold the 3-day rule against him,” Gwen declares. “‘Cause he breaks it so much. ” Peter gives her a look of utter betrayal. Stabbed in the back by his own disciple.

“If we’re on the topic of medical rulebreakin’, I recall that recently somebody didn’t report a broken rib ‘till there were complications–”

“Hey!” Gwen points at Benji accusingly. He pretends he can’t see it. “You did the same thing, like, a week ago!”

Peter covers his face with his hands as the argument begins anew.

__

After dinner, Peni and Miles go head-to-head in a violent chess game. It is very frightening. Peter yawns from his comfortable perch on top of the fridge, watching them stare each other down viciously. Porker backs Peni, Gwen backs Miles, and Benji refuses to get involved. The argument over his wound had survived until the chess match started and he is not eager to bring it up again.

Peter knows nothing about chess, so he gauges the effectiveness of moves based on the noises of alarm made by either side during the game. Peni slams down the piece that looks like a weird horse and everyone makes varying sounds of surprise, so he’s pretty sure that’s a good move. Or a bad one. He can’t really tell.

Outside the weather sends up big flurries of snow into the windows. Tomorrow is looking to be clearer; he might drag all of them to skate on the frozen lake south of the town if it’s still in the same place in Miles’ universe. He could use the practice.

Miles slams a tall shape into the middle of the board, screams, “Checkmate!”, and utter chaos breaks out. Peter is pretty sure Peni is losing at this point if her look of despair is anything to go by. There are a lot of dramatics going on.

Porker is hollering some completely useless advice into Peni’s ear as Miles gloats over his victory, and Benji is crawling onto the roof like he’s trying to avoid the mess entirely. Peter eventually confiscates the entire chessboard for several days to prevent unnecessary competition. They’re on vacation. They’re supposed to be relaxing.

“This is vacation activity,” Peni defends valiantly, but Peter is steadfast.

__

Benji insists on sleeping in the living room because, for some mysterious reason, he hates sleeping in the same place for more than one night in a row. His kids are a mystery and also a pain in the ass. The other kids insist that Peter accompanies Benji for nightmare watch since Porker is on hall duty for the night.

“It can’t be good for your human spine to sleep out in the hall too often,” Porker says, and Peter admits that he has a point. Especially after his fracture. “My spine, however, can do whatever it wants.”

He can’t argue with toon logic.

So Peter is silently draped over an entire armchair, watching the moonlight walk across the floor and giving Benji the dignity of not being stared at in his sleep. The kid doesn’t seem to know how to fall asleep, so the best Peter can do is stare off at the opposite wall. The wind quite literally howls against the windows, spraying ice chips into shapes on the glass.

It’s so quiet that it’s almost hard to hear at first, even with Peter’s spider-hearing; a faint, sleep-bleary mumble that's barely audible over the rattling snowstorm. He catches the words around the third time. A few, barely coherent sounds. Benji is sleep-talking.

“Uncle Benj’min,” he calls, plaintively, like he’s 16 years old again and mumbling through a nightmare. Not that he’s far off from that. Peter freezes stock-still where he’s seated, feeling intensely like he is intruding on a vulnerable moment.

“It’s… Peter, bud.” He says quietly, standing. He smoothes out a stray strand of hair from Benji’s forehead. His eyebrows pinch in his sleep, and he reaches his arms out to fumble for him blindly.

Uncle Ben loved Peter in every universe, it seems. The kid sticks onto his arm with his fingertips and doesn’t let go.

“Uncle Ben,” he complains, a little more insistently and the sound half-slurred. It doesn’t sound like that familiar nightmare Peter has; just an incoherent, half-asleep demand for his missing uncle. Blindly searching for a familiar (painfully familiar) person in Peter. He pats Benji on the elbow.

“C’mon, kid. You’re gonna make me cry.” 

Benji huffs some petulant, indiscernible response under his breath. He’s something else when he’s asleep; less Spider and more young adult. Peter likes to think it is who Benji is despite the Spiderman helm. Still nervous and untempered and civilian-like in gentleness. He likes to think it’s also who he could’ve been. 

Benji is a mystery, because Benji is him, and Peter knows simultaneously everything about his life and nothing at all. He’s flightier than a bird and perpetually haunted by the mystery of his ‘verse and at first glance, the polar opposite of what Peter was when he was younger. Sometimes Benji is still for a fleeting second long enough for Peter to make the connection between this kid and who he used to be, 20 years old and terrified. It is a person that Benji hides well.

“You softie,” he whispers under his breath, affectionately. Then he supposes it is a lucky blessing that he is willing to be that person again with them.

Somewhere along Benji’s indecipherable sleep talk, he mumbles a string of words that sounds an awful lot like love ya, g’night, and then he wedges his head firmly against Peter’s deltoid, rumbling like a motorcycle engine. 

Peter does cry.

Chapter Text

It does snow the next day; wet, heavy snow that coats the grass and trees in glassy white frost. Peter bundles them all up (even Benji, despite loud protest) and drags them to the lake that he hopes is still there in Miles’ universe.

“You guys know how to ice skate, right?”

“No,” Peni says plainly.

So off the kids are to teach her.

Well, teaching is a very generous word for the situation. It has a closer similarity to hazing. Miles and Gwen are each holding one of her hands and shouting different directions and Peni is just attempting to put one foot in front of the other without slipping and dying. 

“Okay, you have to pizza slice your feet, put them–”

“Pizza slice is what you do for skiing, Gwen.”

“Same thing!”

Benji, the little weirdo, is allergic to having fun and stands like a stationed guard on the ice, arms crossed so he looks more intimidating. To whom, Peter does not know. Maybe he’s trying to scare the ice into not breaking. He still seems somewhat preoccupied with not losing his ‘reputation’, so to speak, as broody and mysteriously cynical and emotionally constipated, and Peter doesn’t know how to tell him that he lost it a long time ago.

And, to put all of their skating skills to shame, Porker lands in a graceful pirouette in the center of the lake and circles laps around them as Peni still struggles to stand up on her feet.

“You gotta– no, Miles, you gotta push forward with your back foot–”

“First she has to figure out how to move her back foot without slipping, Gwendolyne– ”

“Guys,” Peter cuts in, with his exhausted Adult Voice. “You’re going to tip her over.”

Rather guiltily, they both draw back, and Peni wobbles. Benji grabs the hood of her jacket before she can be summarily introduced to the ice.

“It’s all in the ankles, Pen,” Porker says encouragingly, with a grandiose spin on the tip of his hoof. “You just gotta keep momentum.”

Peter doesn’t think any of them are good teachers, actually.

Gwen loops hands with Miles and pushes forward, twirling them both around in a lazy loop. “If I fall we both get to die,” she informs him loftily.

“You’re a terrible ice skater,” Miles scoffs, but reciprocates the grip as they rotate in an absent little circle together like they're trying to cookie-cutter a hole in the ice. 

“You guys should be careful,” Peni cautions them, still wobbling as she watches the water spray from their skate blades, and they both ignore her.

It’s sweet. Almost domestic in quality. At least, until the ice creaks and Peter’s spider-sense lights up the back of his neck like static electricity.

“Kids,” he calls.

Benji and Peni notice immediately; Porker grabs both of them in an instant and jets off into the tree line. Gwen and Miles, not so much. Peter watches Miles flicker out of sight, glancing around in confusion, before the lake groans and cracks out from under them.

Well, great.

Domesticity is like that sometimes.

__

“I feel as if I can say that I told you so,” Peni says.

Cold water isn’t life-threatening to the average spider hero. More of a mild annoyance, and also a reason to be made fun of. Peter has the fire roaring and watches both Gwen and Miles miserably huddle around it, hair still dripping with melted ice water.

“Shut up,” Gwen gripes, shouldering her way under Miles’ arm, her teeth still chattering. 

Benji is mother-henning them both, fretfully taking their temperatures, swaddling them both in thick quilts and trying to dry their hair off with paper towels. His concern is largely unwarranted, as both kids are in dry clothes and more cranky than cold at this point. Miles is taking advantage of the situation to elicit many hugs, which would not have been denied from him anyway, so Peter’s not sure what the net benefit is. 

“I told you to be careful,” Peni continues, apparently unable to let the topic go. She’s pressed up against Gwen’s side to provide warmth and also make fun of them at the same time. 

“Peni,” Benji admonishes, still broody with concern.

“Yeah, Peni,” Miles sniffs. Porker is snuggled summarily between them both like a heat pack. Peter is pretty sure that they’ve reached a proper core temperature and the continued contact is no longer necessary, but he certainly is not going to point that out. They’ve got a cute little group hug formation going on right now. He’s not going to interrupt.

“Get in on this, Peter,” Peni says insistently. “Come on.”

“Nope.” He crosses his arms. “I am staying here where it is warm and dry.

“Peter,” Gwen complains. “We’re going to freeze to death.”

“Yeah, they’re going to freeze!”

Peter makes a big show of rolling his eyes and sighing dramatically like he’s being asked a Herculean task. “They are not going to freeze,” he says, already dropping off of the wall to walk toward them. He wedges himself right behind them both, grumbling at their cold wet heads pressing into his shirt.

What a way to spend a day of their rare vacation, piled up into a cluster right in front of the fireplace. Peter wouldn’t want it any other way.

__

“Alright,” Peter announces, clapping his hands together authoritatively. “Sleep time. Everyone goes to sleep now.”

Gwen makes a plaintive sound from the back of her throat. “Who lets you stay up?”

“Me.” Peter points at himself righteously with his thumb. “I am an adult and I make the rules.”

Peni jumps up onto the dinner table, the only one not complaining. “Will you let me stay up?” She asks Benji, rocking on his heels.

“Sure. Why not.”

“Wrong answer.” Peter looks at them both, unimpressed. “Try again.”

Benji and Peni both let out matching theatrically dramatic sighs, and Benji turns back to Peni. “No. Go to sleep.”

The kids are noisy and complaining but Peter, having previously had experience being a dramatic teenager himself, ruffles them all on their heads and tells them to not underestimate the importance of nine hours of sleep, especially in their mushy-headed still-growing state of age. They’re not exactly difficult to wrangle, more so just averse to the idea of listening to the perfectly reasonable suggestions of an adult figure. 

Which makes sense, Peter supposes. Stick it to the old people or whatever.

In their indignation, Peter has successfully wrangled them into a pile on Benji’s bed, and they are now refusing to leave. Well, Miles, Gwen, and Peni are refusing to leave. Benji is trapped there largely against his own will and Porker just sits off to the side looking smug about it all. 

“Goodnight,” Peter sing-songs, throwing a blanket on top of them so that they become one haunted lump of cloth. “This is a vacation and we are supposed to be building healthy sleep schedules here.”

“Peter’s right.” Benji attempts to squirm his way out of the pile unsuccessfully, and Peni drags him back down. She kicks him accusatively, and he dodges out of the way in an impressive show of reflex.

“You’re still up.”

“I’m an old man. I can do what I want.”

“You’re twenty.”

“Like I said.”

Peter digs out another old blanket that smells like mothballs from under the bed and tosses it onto them bodily. “The life expectancy isn’t 50 anymore.”

Benji surfaces from the sea of blankets, blinking at him. “It goes up to 50 soon?”

Peter winces. Not the direction he wanted the conversation to be going. “Way up, kid. Way up.”

__

“Kid,” Peter calls out into the dark. “C’mon.”

The dust motes hanging in the beams of moonlight shift erratically.

“Miles.”

The air grumbles. “How did you know I was there?”

Peter pats the back of his neck. “Spidey sense. Y’gonna come out?”

A pause. “No.”

Teenagers. 

“Come on, kid.”

The air ripples, shrinks in on itself, and then Miles’ face bleeds into the dim moonlight, casting shapes into the light. He slips onto the couch, slots right against Peter’s side, and oh, Peter’s heart crunches up right there like a stepped-on soda can. 

“Bad dream?”

Miles hums weakly.

“Same one?”

Surprisingly, he shakes his head, the movement slow and contemplative. “No,” he says. “It was nice. It was a good dream.” He’s quiet and still; he shouldn’t be this quiet, it breaks his heart. “Is that bad?”

“Of course not.” Peter shifts to let Miles curl up, tucking his head right against the couch cushions. He’s so young. “Why would it be bad?”

“It was a good dream,” Miles repeats, weakly and miserably. 

“Was it?” Peter isn’t fantastic at appropriately emotionally vulnerable conversations, but Miles makes it kind of hard to be anything but authentic.

Miles nods again, a little aimlessly, and then his eyes squint down and he flickers in and out of sight with uneasiness. "It was a good dream with my uncle and I'm still sad," he mumbles, sounding lost. "That isn't fair."

Oh, this kid.

This is way too many complex traumatic emotions for a 15-year-old to process at 3 am. Peter silently curses the universes for making Spider-people the way they are. 

“I miss him,” Miles says, hopelessly and agonizingly young.

“I know.”

“I don’t feel so good.”

“I know, kid. I’m sorry.”

He tucks a thin coil of hair out of Miles’ eye from where it had stuck there, and Miles sinks into his side, all his muscles taut and shaking like he’s ready to bolt at any given second. “I’m sorry,” Peter repeats softly, and there’s nothing he can say that will be the right thing for him to hear. He knows from experience. 

Miles is hiding his face in Peter’s shoulder, not quite crying because he’s 15 years old and thinks he’s too old to experience emotions as all 15-year-olds do, and this grief is familiar. It’s a little odd seeing it from the other side.

So he does what a 16-year-old Peter B. Parker would’ve wanted from an adult. He sits there, rests his chin gently against Miles' head, and doesn’t say anything at all.

_

“Hey,” Peter stage-whispers into Benji’s room.

There’s a low, vaguely inhuman grumbling sound from the dark, and then Benji’s night-glow eyes blink open like spots of starlight. 

“Benj. Hey. Miles had a dream.”

Not a nightmare, but a dream. Sometimes they can be treated the same way.

Benji yawns, dislodging his mask as he rubs his face awake, and squints at them both. Miles stands there, hands held in front of him a little helplessly like he’s not quite sure what to do.

“Come here,” Benji mumbles, holding an arm out. “Mir zenen mishpucha, c’mon.”

He’s barely conscious, not quite understanding what he’s saying, but the way the sentiment rolls so effortlessly off of his tongue makes Peter’s heart sing. 

Miles crawls under his arm, worming his way in between Peni and Gwen. He slots his head against Benji’s neck and Benji sleepily rearranges his limbs to accommodate before resting his chin on Miles’ ear, purring like a motorbike. 

It’s just above audible at first, patchy in quality like he’s just barely managing to force it out of his throat. Benji has a hoarse, shaking singing voice, the kind that hasn’t seen the light of day for a long while because there’s nothing worth singing about, but it lends well to the raspy lullaby he's mumbling with his eyes closed like he's hardly aware he's doing it.

“Rozhinkes mit mandlen,” he hums, his voice low enough that it struggles to strain to the pitch. A lullaby to comfort a child. “Shlof-zhe, Yidele, shlof. In dem lidl, meyn kind… many wonders…” There are little parts where he forgets the Yiddish and substitutes English in fragments, or just hums little bridges to replace the phrase. “Ay-lyu-lyu...”

Peni tucks her head against the underside of Benji’s throat in her sleep, listening to the rumble emitting from him like a motorcycle engine. “Ay-lyu-lyu…” His voice trails off into a drowsy, low drawl. Miles folds himself up into a little ball right against Benji’s side before finally allowing himself to be lulled to sleep. “Shlof-zhe, Yidele, shlof.”

Mishpucha. Family.