Peter Parker | MCU

It was supposed to be harmless.

Peter wasn't even entirely sure which one of them had started it. Five minutes ago, they'd been sitting together on the couch in his apartment, arguing over what to put on while Peter scrolled through the same handful of movies for what had to be the third time. Somewhere between him deliberately ignoring their suggestion and making the mistake of holding the remote out of reach, things had escalated. A shove to his shoulder had earned one in return, theirs considerably more genuine than his, and Peter had made the fatal mistake of laughing at them for it. After that, apparently, all bets were off.

Peter had gotten pretty good at pretending to be weaker than he was. He had to be. Strength wasn't something he could switch off, and normal people generally noticed when someone picked up a full moving box like it weighed about as much as an empty shoebox. So he compensated. He pretended jars were stuck when they weren't, remembered to use both hands when moving furniture, and made a point of actually looking like he was exerting himself whenever they asked him to carry something heavy. Most of the time, it had become second nature.

Most of the time.

Right now, he was distracted. They were both laughing, the remote had disappeared somewhere between the couch cushions, and Peter was more concerned with avoiding another incoming pillow than maintaining the carefully constructed illusion that he was an entirely ordinary twenty-something from Queens.

They managed to catch him in the side with it anyway.

"Okay, you're gonna regret that."

Peter lunged before they could get away, catching them around the middle and pulling them back toward him. They twisted in his arms, still trying to escape, and one of their hands came up to shove at his shoulder. Peter caught their wrist automatically.

They tried to yank it free.

His fingers tightened.

It wasn't intentional. There wasn't any anger behind it, no conscious decision to hold them harder. His body simply responded to the resistance before his brain had the chance to remind it that this wasn't a fight. That he wasn't catching someone's fist in an alley or stopping a weapon from being swung at him.

For Peter, it barely registered as pressure.

For them, it did.

The sound they made wasn't laughter.

Peter released them so quickly it was almost violent in itself, his entire expression changing in an instant. The grin vanished. He recoiled like he'd been burned, hands immediately pulling back toward his own chest as his eyes dropped to their wrist.

"Shit."

Red marks were already beginning to appear where his fingers had been.

Peter's stomach dropped.

"Hey—hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

He reached toward them automatically, then stopped himself before actually touching them. His hand hovered uselessly between them for a second before he pulled it back. Every trace of teasing had disappeared from him now. His eyes kept moving between their face and their wrist, guilt settling heavily across his features.

He knew exactly how hard he'd grabbed them.

Or, more accurately, he knew how little effort he'd used.

That was worse.

Peter swallowed, suddenly very aware of how quiet his apartment had become. The television continued playing behind them, absurdly normal against the sudden tension in the room. His heart was hammering hard enough that he could hear it, and for once the heightened senses he'd spent years learning to live with were doing him absolutely no favors.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, quieter this time. "I forgot how hard I was—"

Peter stopped.

His mouth remained slightly open.

There it was.

Not exactly a confession, but close enough that his brain immediately started screaming at him.

He could see the question forming before it was ever asked. Peter glanced down at the marks again, then back at them, and whatever excuse he'd instinctively started searching for died before it reached his mouth. There wasn't a good explanation for leaving fingerprints on someone's wrist when he'd barely squeezed. There definitely wasn't a good explanation for why Peter looked less surprised by his own strength than horrified that he'd failed to hide it.

His shoulders slowly sank.

"Please don't freak out."

A beat passed.

Peter winced.

"Actually, no. That's— that's probably the worst possible thing I could've said."

Peter was supposed to see them tonight.

That thought had been sitting comfortably in the back of his mind for most of patrol, tucked somewhere between the police scanner chattering in his ear and the increasingly persistent reminder that he hadn't eaten anything since lunch. Nothing special. No reservations, no elaborate plans. He was supposed to finish up, swing home, shower, and send them a message asking whether they wanted him to come over or whether they were coming to his place. Normal relationship stuff. The kind of normal Peter had grown protective of without quite realizing it.

Then he'd heard the crash.

It happened three blocks away. The sharp squeal of brakes came first, followed by metal folding into metal hard enough to cut through every other sound in the city. Peter was already moving before the screaming started. He changed direction mid-swing, released the web he'd been holding onto and fired another toward the building opposite, momentum carrying him around the corner fast enough that the scene came into view seconds later.

Two cars. One had spun across the intersection. The other had been driven sideways into a parked vehicle, its front end crushed and smoke already curling from beneath the hood. People were gathering on the sidewalks. Someone was shouting that they'd called 911. Peter landed hard beside the wreck and immediately moved toward the driver's side.

Then he looked through the broken window.

Everything inside him stopped.

They were there.

For half a second, Peter wasn't Spider-Man anymore. He wasn't thinking about the crowd or the mask over his face or the dozens of phones inevitably pointing in his direction. He saw blood near their hairline. The airbag had deployed, glass scattered across their clothes and the seat around them, and the driver's side door had folded inward enough that there was no chance of opening it normally.

"No, no, no—"

The words escaped before he could stop them.

Peter was beside the car in an instant. He crouched near the window, one gloved hand gripping the edge of the ruined door as he tried to get a better look at them without moving anything unnecessarily. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to tear the entire side of the car away. He forced himself to slow down. Neck. Spine. Breathing. Conscious. Get them out safely. Panic later.

"Hey. Look at me."

His voice was softer now, but there was nothing of Spider-Man's usual performance in it. No jokes for the frightened crowd. No deliberately exaggerated confidence. Peter spoke the way he did when it was just the two of them and something was wrong, familiar concern slipping effortlessly through the mask.

"Don't try to move yet, okay? I've got you."

He didn't notice.

His attention had already shifted to the crushed door. Peter wedged his fingers into the warped metal and pulled carefully at first, checking that nothing inside shifted toward them. The hinges screamed in protest. Another pull ripped the door free entirely, Peter tossing it aside before immediately dropping back beside them.

"You're okay. I'm right here."

Again.

The same voice that had mumbled good morning beside them. The same voice that called them when Peter couldn't sleep. The same cadence, the same little drop at the end of his sentences whenever he was worried and trying desperately not to sound like it.

Peter reached inside and stopped just short of touching them, eyes rapidly checking for anything that would make moving them dangerous. Sirens were getting louder in the distance. Good. Paramedics would be here soon.

But there was smoke coming from the front of the car, and Peter wasn't willing to leave them inside it.

"I'm going to get you out. Put your arm around my neck if you can."

He slipped one arm carefully behind their back and another beneath their legs, movements impossibly gentle considering what those same hands had just done to the car door. Peter lifted them from the wreck as though they weighed nothing.

Then their attention settled properly on his masked face.

Peter felt them go still.

Not the dazed stillness from before. Something different.

His senses caught the change immediately—the shift in their breathing, the way they were suddenly staring at him instead of the wreck behind them. Peter's brow furrowed beneath the mask.

"What?"

One word.

One very familiar word, spoken in Peter Parker's completely undisguised voice.

And finally, several seconds too late, Peter understood.

His steps faltered.

For the first time since he'd seen them inside that car, something other than fear crossed his face beneath the mask. He couldn't hide the way his entire body stiffened, or the fraction of a second in which his grip on them tightened protectively before he caught himself.

Peter said nothing.

He didn't need to.

The sirens were almost on top of them now, red lights beginning to reflect against the surrounding buildings. Peter stared down at them through the white lenses of the mask, and for once there wasn't a single clever excuse waiting for him.

Because they knew that voice.

And judging by the sudden silence between them, Peter knew they knew it too.

Peter's apartment had reached that comfortable stage of the evening where neither of them was really doing anything anymore.

Dinner had been finished almost an hour ago, the dishes were still sitting in the sink under the mutual agreement that they were a problem for later, and some movie Peter had insisted was good was playing mostly unwatched from his laptop on the coffee table. Peter himself had disappeared into the bathroom a few minutes ago after complaining that there was something in his eye, leaving them alone on the couch with his half-empty glass of water, a bowl containing approximately four pieces of popcorn, and his phone abandoned beside them.

It buzzed once.

They ignored it.

Then twice.

The third vibration sent the phone inching dangerously close to the edge of the couch cushion. It was already beginning to tip when they caught it, lifting it before it could hit the floor. The screen lit automatically in their hand.

Peter didn't particularly hide his phone from them. There had never been any reason to. They knew his passcode, mostly because Peter had asked them to answer texts for him while he was cooking more than once, and he had a habit of leaving the thing wherever he happened to put it down. His messages weren't exactly exciting enough to warrant secrecy anyway. MJ sending him something at two in the morning, Ned blowing up a group chat, missed calls, overdue reminders Peter had ignored for three consecutive days. Normal things.

The notification currently sitting across his lock screen wasn't normal.

NYPD DISPATCH — Priority Alert

Another appeared beneath it before the first had even disappeared.

Armed robbery reported. Multiple suspects. Units responding.

The preview contained an address.

For a moment, there was nothing particularly incriminating about it beyond the obvious question of why Peter Parker had police dispatch notifications being sent directly to his phone.

Then another notification appeared.

Suit connection unavailable.

The bathroom door opened.

Peter emerged rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand, hair slightly mussed from where he'd apparently run wet fingers through it. He made it two steps into the living room before noticing what they were holding.

He stopped.

It wasn't subtle.

His hand fell away from his face. His eyes immediately dropped to the illuminated screen, and something sharp flickered across his expression before he could hide it. Not confusion. Not the reaction of someone wondering why their partner had picked up their phone.

Recognition.

Peter knew exactly what they'd seen.

"Hey."

The word came out a little too quickly.

He crossed the room and held out his hand, trying for casual and landing somewhere considerably closer to suspicious.

"My phone was about to fall, wasn't it?"

Another vibration interrupted him.

Peter's eyes flicked toward the screen.

He couldn't help it. It was instinct by now. Years of training himself to register every alert, every siren, every report that might mean someone needed him. His attention remained there for half a second too long before snapping back to them.

He forced a small smile.

"Thanks."

His hand was still extended.

There were plenty of explanations Peter could have offered. He could say he'd downloaded a scanner app out of curiosity. He could blame some project at work. The suit notification was harder, admittedly, but given enough time Peter Parker could usually talk himself into a lie complicated enough to temporarily survive scrutiny.

Except his phone buzzed again.

This time, Peter didn't even need to see the screen.

His head turned sharply toward the window.

Far beyond the walls of the apartment, too distant to be audible to anyone without enhanced hearing, sirens had started moving through Queens.

Peter stared toward the glass.

Then slowly looked back at them.

His phone was still in their hand.

The color had drained slightly from his face.

For several seconds, neither of them moved. Peter's gaze dropped once more toward the notifications before meeting theirs again, and he visibly abandoned whatever excuse he'd been preparing.

"Oh."

Peter had been complaining about the splinter for the better part of ten minutes.

Not seriously complaining, because apparently that would have been too easy. Instead, he'd spent ten minutes intermittently rubbing the side of his palm, squinting at it, declaring that he'd gotten it whenever they looked over, and then returning to picking uselessly at the same spot with his fingernails. He'd gotten it while attempting to fix one of the kitchen cabinets in his apartment—a cabinet that had been crooked since before they'd started dating and that Peter had spontaneously decided needed to be fixed tonight. The repair itself had taken approximately fifteen minutes. The tiny piece of wood embedded beneath his skin had apparently become the greater engineering challenge.

"I've almost got it."

He did not almost have it.

Peter was hunched over the kitchen table, tongue pressed briefly against the inside of his cheek as he tried again. When they finally took his hand to look for themselves, he surrendered it with only a token complaint. The splinter was tiny, but deep enough that fingers alone weren't going to work. A needle would.

Peter didn't seem particularly concerned when they returned with one.

"Just so we're clear, if you somehow amputate my hand doing this, I'm gonna be really upset."

His smile immediately betrayed him, and he settled his arm against the table. Peter watched for a few seconds while they disinfected the needle, then his attention drifted elsewhere. His phone was sitting nearby. He picked it up with his free hand, scrolling through something while they worked, apparently trusting them enough that he wasn't even paying attention to what they were doing.

The point of the needle pressed against his palm.

And stopped.

It slipped sideways.

They adjusted their grip and tried again.

Nothing.

Peter continued scrolling.

The needle pushed hard enough this time that the skin beneath it visibly indented, stretching under the pressure without breaking. It should have gone through. Instead, the point skidded away again.

Peter glanced up when they repositioned his hand.

"Can't get it?"

Another attempt.

The needle bent.

Peter's eyes dropped toward it.

For a second, neither of them moved.

The slight curve in the metal was unmistakable. Peter stared at it, then at his palm, then back at the needle as though it had personally betrayed him.

"Oh."

That was when he remembered.

His expression changed almost imperceptibly. Not enough that someone who didn't know him would necessarily notice, but they did know him. They knew the particular way Peter's lips pressed together when his brain was moving considerably faster than he wanted anyone else to realize. They knew the slight widening of his eyes that usually preceded a spectacularly bad attempt at improvisation.

Peter slowly pulled his hand toward himself.

"Cheap needle?"

It was an awful excuse, and even Peter seemed to realize it as soon as it left his mouth.

He looked at the bent metal again.

Then, because apparently he had decided committing to this was somehow better than stopping, he reached across the table and picked up another needle from the little sewing kit. He held it between two fingers, inspecting it with exaggerated seriousness.

"These things are probably really flimsy. You know, manufacturing standards aren't exactly—"

The needle snapped between his fingers.

Peter froze.

Half of it landed on the table.

His eyes followed it down.

There was a long silence.

"Okay."

He carefully placed the remaining half beside it.

Peter's hand was still completely unmarked. No puncture. No blood. Not even the little red spot that should have been there after someone had repeatedly pressed a needle against his skin.

He curled his fingers toward his palm as if hiding it now could somehow undo the last thirty seconds.

There were explanations Peter could invent. He'd invented much worse ones over the years. Weird calluses. The angle had been wrong. Faulty needles. Maybe some bizarre property of the splinter itself. Give him another thirty seconds and he could probably construct an entire scientific argument for why none of this was remotely suspicious.

But this was them.

Lying to strangers was one thing. Lying to someone who knew exactly what his face looked like when he was lying was considerably harder.

Peter leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes lifting to meet theirs.

"...Before you ask," he started carefully, "I would just like it officially noted that I was doing a really good job keeping this particular conversation from ever happening."

His gaze flickered toward the broken needle.

A beat passed.

"Up until about thirty seconds ago."

MJ had assumed they knew.

In her defense, it wasn't an unreasonable assumption. They'd been with Peter long enough that MJ had stopped thinking of them as Peter's new partner months ago, and there were certain things that seemed impossible to keep hidden once someone had become that involved in his life. Peter disappeared without warning. He showed up late with increasingly ridiculous excuses. He had a relationship with his phone that could best be described as answering messages whenever the stars aligned. Every few weeks, he appeared with a bruise in a place no normal person acquired a bruise and expected everyone around him to accept that he'd walked into another door.

Apparently, Peter had been getting away with it.

The four of them were crowded around Peter's kitchen table, though Ned had abandoned his chair at some point and migrated toward the refrigerator in search of something to drink. MJ was halfway through telling a story, Peter was beside them picking toppings off a slice of pizza that he'd specifically ordered with those toppings, and the evening had settled into the familiar kind of chaos that happened whenever everyone ended up at his apartment at once.

Peter's phone buzzed against the table.

He glanced down.

MJ noticed the change immediately.

It was tiny. Most people wouldn't have caught it. Peter didn't stop smiling, didn't suddenly jump to his feet, didn't do anything dramatic. His eyes simply lingered on the screen for a second before moving toward the window.

MJ knew that look.

Ned knew that look too, apparently, because he glanced over from the refrigerator.

Peter picked up his phone.

"I, uh—"

"Don't," MJ interrupted, reaching for another slice of pizza. "Please don't make us listen to another one."

Peter's mouth snapped shut.

He gave her a look.

MJ ignored it.

"Another what?" came the natural question from beside him.

"One of his excuses."

Peter went completely still.

MJ didn't notice. Not yet.

"He always does this." She gestured vaguely toward Peter with her pizza. "His phone goes off, he suddenly remembers some incredibly urgent thing he forgot to do, and then Spider-Man conveniently shows up somewhere ten minutes later."

Silence.

Ned slowly closed the refrigerator.

MJ took a bite.

Peter stared at her.

It took approximately three seconds for MJ to realize that nobody else was speaking.

Her chewing slowed.

Her eyes moved from Peter to them.

Then back to Peter.

Peter's expression had gone blank in that particular way it only ever did when something had gone so catastrophically wrong that his brain hadn't decided how to react yet.

MJ stopped chewing altogether.

"Oh."

Peter's eyes widened slightly.

MJ lowered the pizza.

"Oh, shit."

"MJ."

"I thought they knew."

Peter made a strangled noise somewhere between disbelief and horror. "Why would you think they knew?"

MJ's eyebrows shot upward. "Why would I think you told your partner you're Spider-Man?"

Peter visibly flinched.

There it was.

Not an implication anymore. Not something that could be explained away as MJ making a joke or talking about someone else.

Spider-Man.

Peter.

Same sentence.

Ned quietly shut the refrigerator the rest of the way and remained beside it, suddenly looking very interested in being anywhere other than the kitchen.

Peter hadn't moved.

His phone buzzed again in his hand, completely forgotten now. Whatever had been important enough to pull his attention toward the window seconds ago might as well have ceased to exist.

MJ looked between the two of them before slowly putting her slice back onto her plate.

"I'm going to—"

"Nope." Peter pointed at her without taking his eyes off them. "You're not going anywhere. You don't get to drop that and then leave."

"I really feel like my continued presence isn't going to improve this situation."

"It literally cannot get worse."

Ned cleared his throat from across the room.

Peter's head whipped toward him.

"Don't."

Ned raised both hands.

Peter turned back.

For the first time since MJ had said it, he actually looked at them properly.

The panic on his face faded around the edges. Something heavier replaced it. His shoulders dropped, and the hand holding his phone slowly lowered to his side. There was no point trying to deny it. Not after MJ had said the words and Peter had responded to them without hesitation. Not with Ned standing across the room looking like someone who'd been keeping exactly the same secret.

Peter swallowed.

"I was going to tell you."

MJ made a tiny sound.

Peter shot her a warning look.

"Not helping."

He looked back at them, and this time there was no attempt at an excuse.

"I know that's probably not making this better." His fingers tightened around his phone. "But I was. I just... hadn't figured out how."

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