Work Text:
The first year with Aunt May and Uncle Ben is hard.
Understandably so.
Not just on Peter, but on his guardians as well.
Hard seems like an understatement. But all other words out there still somehow fail to sum it up accurately. They feel like thin platitudes somehow, a gossamer bandage on a gaping wound, so it becomes a private joke in the later years that it was ‘hard.’ But during it? Hard was simplifying things.
A seven-year-old boy built of more pain and loss than blood and bone is bundled into Ben and May’s lives like a car crash that accompanies their own miasma of grief. And it is not as easy as sliding two puzzle pieces together to suddenly coexist, let alone peacefully. It is more the mixing of oil and water, formless bounds that try to take up space in one another.
Hard in a way that years later, Peter still won’t fully accept or talk about, not with anyone. Even when the three finally manage to walk a tentative tightrope of peace, Ben and May ache when they remember the beginning. Peter grows quiet when he remembers the beginning. It was a house that unfolded into a mosaic of grief as the days pass, as all parties unwittingly tread into areas that should have been labelled “Landmine Ahead – Tread at Own Risk.” That year of patchwork life after the death of Peter’s parents leaves a stain on each of them.
Like the first time Peter leaves the corners of a sandwich on his plate and refuses to eat them because ‘it’s all bread and not a sandwich anymore,’ and it hits Ben in the sternum like a steel bat as he walks into the kitchen. Prepared to scold Peter for talking back to May, Ben is abruptly, swallowed with a near unbearable layer of sadness. There’s a dizzying moment he experiences in the kitchen entryway, where he is simultaneously in the present and thrust viciously into his own childhood.
Because sitting at the counter is Ben’s dead brother as he once was, saying the same thing to their mother, that the ‘corner of the crusts don’t even count as part of a sandwich since there is no insides in them’ and the memory feels tinted with gold and love. Even as Peter stares at his uncle petulantly, Ben gets trapped in a dizzying moment of past and present, mirror images overlapping of his dead brother and living nephew, the same expression on both their faces.
(Ben must walk out of the kitchen, pieces breaking inside him as he does, and it takes him days before he can explain what happened to May. She finds him minutes later silently sitting on the floor of their bedroom with pictures of his brother in his lap and tears wetting the edges. All Peter knows is that when he doesn’t eat the corners of sandwiches, Uncle Ben keeps leaving the room. Leaving the room with an expression that looks twisted and lost. Peter takes to hiding them under his napkin, or sneaking them into the trash, so that Uncle Ben doesn’t get that look on his face anymore. Or leave.)
Or when Aunt May runs to Peter’s room in the middle of night, because he wakes up screaming from a nightmare, and is inconsolable. It’s a knife to the chest every time the child asks for his mom or dad, begs for parents who can never come back and hold him, because there is nothing that May can do but let tears well in her eyes and stay with Peter even as he pleads for ghosts.
Over his small head, she’ll meet Ben’s equally devastated gaze, before he will leave to bring them both a glass of water, his hands needing to do something.
(She never wanted children, her and Ben content to live their peaceful little life and was happy to be Peter’s fun aunt whenever the Parker family came for a visit. But now, with tears and snot from the child soaking her nightgown as he cries himself to sleep, May thinks that she is okay never being Peter’s mother, but that she will protect him as if she was because she can’t stand the taste of grief in his room.)
Or when Peter trudges in from playing out in the front yard and is hit with the smell of the same shoe polish his father would use on his best leather loafers, and promptly starts sobbing.
Uncle Ben’s dress shoes gleam by the door, ready for their owner to take them out to a colleagues wedding.
Or how Peter’s hair gets progressively more rumpled as the boy gets ready for bed, eyes wide behind his glasses as he smiles into the mirror, and how both May and Ben can’t help but see the ghost of a dead man staring back.
But what may be the worst moment in the Landmine Year, is when May takes Peter to the mall for back-to-school shopping towards the end of that first summer.
He’s about to go into second grade, but it will be a new school and he’s nervous and scared and absolutely does not want to go, but there isn’t much of a choice.
Even at seven years old, he knows this.
So, he’s quiet and sad, but doesn’t cry when Aunt May bundles him into the car and drives them to the nearest mall.
“We can get everything done at once!” she had explained as why they were going to a mall and not just wandering Queens until they found everything they needed.
Peter had wanted to say something mean because his heart felt sideways in his chest, but he had seen the strange sparkle in Aunt May’s eyes and kept quiet.
(When she had told Ben that she was going to take Peter back to school shopping, her husband had pulled her into a tight hug that morning and hadn’t said a word. Even he had seen that painful manic look in her eyes, as if she was terrified of screwing this up. And there was nothing to say to that.)
So, they go to the mall.
Peter follows May dutifully around the first floor as they get him new shoes and a bigger backpack, then a pencil case and a new set of pencil crayons and markers to fill it. He doesn’t say much but to tell the salesman that the first three pairs of shoes they try on fit his feet weird and make his big toes scrunch against the tips, or that he doesn’t like the first red backpack that May shows him, because it doesn’t have enough pockets.
As time passes, May’s smile stretches at the edges until it looks uncomfortable and plastic and the lady at the check-out where they get the pencil case looks at her with concern but doesn’t say anything.
But it isn’t until they move onto new clothes shopping, that Aunt May unknowingly drags both her and Peter directly into a landmine of grief.
The second Peter sees the escalator in the center of the mall atrium, he freezes. Hand still in Aunt May’s, she goes another half step before his lack of movement because resistance in her hand and she accidentally tugs him off balance. Stumbling, Peter goes pale as she watches, lips pressed so tightly it looks like his jaw is trembling.
He wants to disappear.
“What’s wrong Peter?” May asks, crouching to look at him eye level.
There’s a moment where the boy’s jaw works, and he finally looks at her.
“I want to go home,” he says clearly, and May frowns.
“We still have to get you some new clothes Peter,” she starts, “you’ve almost outgrown everything at home. And the Old Navy upstairs should have everything you need, it’s the last store we’re going to, I promise,” she adds, thinking the hesitation is because Peter is starting to get overwhelmed.
(She’s not entirely wrong.)
(The trigger of the mine is stepped on.)
“I want to go home now,” Peter mutters, eyes drifting back to the atrium.
A flash of annoyance runs through Aunt May, because this is something she can deal with. A grouchy child is still a child, and they have errands that need to be finished. Peter has been grumpy before and she’s starting to think she understands his tells. She thinks that’s exactly what she’s encountered here.
“We’ll go home after Old Navy,” May answers, standing tall and giving Peter’s hand a gentle tug in the direction of the escalator.
(The trigger is released.)
Peter explodes.
With an abrupt jolt, May finds her hand empty of Peter’s small one and the sound of small feet smacking against cold tile registers before she can even turn to face him. Caught off guard, her hand tightens only around air, as if to snatch him back by force of will. She catches a glimpse of his blue t-shirt just as it disappears around a group of teenage girls, and her heart drops to her toes.
“Peter!” Aunt May shouts, terror flooding her veins, drawing attention of the crowds, but Peter can’t hear her.
He can’t even see where he is, not really.
Heartbeat hammering in his ears, and fear clawing its way up and down his spine, he sprints as if the hounds of hell are at his heels.
Because, for a moment, he wasn’t seven, he wasn’t with Aunt May, he wasn’t at a mall in Queens.
(This is a landmine he didn’t even remember having.)
Peter is, for that brief instant where all he can think is run, four and scared out of his mind.
So scared his limbs shake and he can’t stop crying.
(Here’s the thing.)
(Peter Parker at seven years old is terrified of escalators.)
(When he was four, he got stuck on one.)
He can still taste the tears and salt on his tongue and the blood in his mouth from screaming hysterically. He can feel his mom’s hand runs soothing strokes over his hair and murmurs gentle reassurances as his dad crouches next to him at the top of a different escalator in a different mall. Peter’s left foot aches and aches and aches from the way the laces of his Tonka Truck light up sneakers have been caught in the escalators teeth and he’s scared in a way that an animal trapped is.
He doesn’t remember the way his dad went white when Peter first shrieked upon realizing he was stuck, or how fast his mom hand flown to hit the emergency stop button of the escalator. But he does remember how it felt to have his heart hammering in his chest so strongly he thought it was going to burst free and flop away on the cold floors. As if his insides were full of angry snakes. Remembers his foot starting to hurt in a way he had never felt before, and he’s so young and full of emotions that he doesn’t yet have a name for, that all he can do is shriek and cry and try to lift his foot desperately.
Each tug tightens the knot that has formed and worsens the pressure, and the only thing that stops Peter from continuing to try and yank his leg free is his father grabbing hold of his small ankle and holding fast. Between hiccupping sobs and shrieks, Peter will never know he was only stuck for about a minute. Will never know that each time he managed to blubber out “daddy please let go!” his father had flinched as if struck and his mother had sucked in a heavy breath. That minute felt endless to him, the kind of moment that stretches out like a rubberband, just waiting for the tension become just too much and for it to snap.
At first, his father had tried to wriggle the laces free, but the plastic eyelets had become deformed in the teeth of the escalator. It was Peter’s shrieks of fear that had drawn the attention of a nearby security guard who offers Peter’s father a knife to cut the laces free and radioed to maintenance that they would have to come by and take a look at the mechanical components. A nearby family of four, two young girls tucked under their mother’s coat, had looked on with sympathy. A teenager with a skateboard over his shoulder had snorted at the sight and carried on.
Once cut free, Peter does remember how the painful pressure on his foot had abruptly vanished and he was scooped into his father’s arms. Nose tucked into the collar of his dad’s shirt, breathing heavily the familiar scent of safety, as his mom had run a soothing hand down his back.
They had left the mall after that.
Peter never wore his Tonka Truck sneakers again.
Whenever the Parker’s went back to a shopping center after that, his parents would take the elevator every time, holding his hand whenever he snuck his tiny fingers into theirs without question. They never tugged him in the direction of the escalators, and the first few outings, made sure to keep a healthy distance from the machinery.
And now, he flees from Aunt May and the escalator with that same primal fear he felt all those years ago.
Her shouts chase him, but all he can think is to get away.
(It’s one of the worst days of Aunt May’s life. It’s agony dealing with the mall security and then the police, not knowing if she’ll ever see her nephew again, mind spiralling with absolute worst case scenarios and feeling the noose of guilt drawing tighter and tighter around her neck.)
(Peter goes missing in that mall for over an hour, unresponsive to the crackles of the overhead speakers asking him to present himself to a security officer, unresponsive for the calls of his name, unresponsive until a janitor finds a small child wedged into the depths of a maintenance closet that wasn’t securely latched, shaking and crying from where he huddles in the corner by the mop bucket. She immediately radios her head office to tell them she’s found a missing child and then sits on the floor nearby, telling him stories about her dog named Bucket for the next five minutes. He never responds, but as she speaks, the tears lessen.)
(When Aunt May bursts through the door with a gaggle of security behind her and even a police officer, the tears start up again, even as Peter let’s his aunt scoop him up from the corner. Because he can see how scared she is, in the way her eyes glitter with her own tears, and he feels bad.)
(Bad and scared and lonely, and he misses his mom and dad.)
When they get home, no new clothes, tear tracks down Peter’s cheeks and Aunt May’s hands still shaking, Peter crawls into her lap on the couch and whispers that he’s sorry.
He can’t get any more words out around the boulder that sets up home in his throat, but Aunt May just hugs him fiercely.
“I know baby,” she whispers.
When Uncle Ben gets home from work, he finds them both passed out in an exhausted sleep on the couch. Bags are scattered on the floor around them. The tear tracks on Peter’s face and the way May’s hair looks as though her hands have run through it countless times through the day tell Ben that something happened.
His heart twists.
But he doesn’t wake the two, instead sets about making dinner that can be reheated easily.
(And his heart cracks when, later, Aunt May tells him what happened.)
(He can’t even get upset at Peter for scaring his aunt like that, because everyone in that house knows that this was one of those landmines.)
(Uncle Ben takes Peter to buy new clothes the next weekend at one of the small stores down the street. And when Peter tries to apologies, Ben just pats him on the shoulder and buys him ice cream when they finish.)
(“I don’t like escalators,” Peter finally admits, vanilla still swirling in his mouth, eyes firmly on the battered plastic tabletop of the diner. Tears threaten to spill over.)
(“Okay,” is all Uncle Ben can say, even as he holds Peter’s small hand in his own.)