Chapter Text
Peter came into the world, as almost all children did, screaming and covered with blood.
This was the full extent of his similarities with other children.
He had been quickly whisked away from his mother as she screamed in a way that mirrored his own. The machines hooked up to her screamed along with her. Peter was not in the room as blood gushed out of her and doctors crowded her, hurried and frantic.
Peter was not in the room to hear her heart monitor let out a final, steady tone. He could not hear the doctors record her time of death, or remove the wires attached to her. Peter lay in a bed in the NICU, three weeks early and still too small for his age, and he did not scream, nor cry.
His father had been crying in his mother’s room instead. Wailing as big, fat tears streamed down his face, his eyes turning red. The fluorescents of the hospital were harsh as Richard hugged his wife’s unmoving body, asking her, begging her, to wake up. Her eyes were blank, nobody had thought to close them yet.
In a better world, people would have looked from Peter to his mother and told him that they looked nearly the exact same. Same eyes, same nose. Same manner of cracking their knuckles in the morning.
This world was not kind enough to allow Peter that particular benefit, not even once. This particular pattern of unluckiness would persist, quite possibly, for the rest of his life.
o O o
After the death of Mary, Richard became angry. Irritable. He worked much more often, never picked Peter up from aftercare, let alone school, and came home much later every night. That is, on nights he did come home.
The nights where he had to work so late Peter never even heard him come in, a teenage girl named Penny with dirty blonde hair down to her waist would come over to watch him.
More often, it was the opposite. He watched her. She’d give him a sandwich for dinner that he’d never eat because she used the wrong jelly, and it was too lumpy, and he’d stare up at her with his big brown eyes and see the corners of her mouth occasionally lift at the contents of her flip phone.
Peter never spoke to her, nor did he speak to his father often, and when he did it would be broken sentences in whispered tones. The doctors had said it would get better, that he’d learn. The learning of speech was not an issue, he just refused to use it.
In the meantime, he went to school every day, in a class for “special” children. All the other kids in the class would scream and cry when they didn’t get the things they wanted. Peter would just slap his hands over his ears and close his eyes tight.
He did not have very many friends.
Instead, when he was stuck inside for long periods of time, he’d read. He’d climb up onto his father’s bookshelf and snatch big, heavy volumes about any topics he could get his hands on. Most of the time, he was able to finish them in just a few days, because he’d hide them from his father.
The only time it had ever taken him longer to finish a book was Rainer F. Foelix’s Biology of Spiders.
It had been one of the last books on his father’s bookshelf, as it appeared almost boring from its place on the shelf, with its simple white text black background.
It wasn’t particularly thick, maybe an inch deep with small text on the pages. He’d read larger, much more boring books with big words he wouldn’t understand until he got to the glossary at the end. The cover had an image of a beady eyed creature with 8 fuzzy limbs. This was why Peter had picked the particular volume.
The book had started off just about as captivating as the average book he’d found on his father’s shelf. Table of contents, copyright page, everything you’d expect in a 310 page comprehensive guide to arachnids.
On page 6, Peter found himself gazing at a juvenile house spider, “sitting at the entrance of her retreat” for a ridiculously long time.
He was transfixed, enough to barely register the door clicking open and have nearly no time to hide the book before a familiar, but out of place voice cut through the stale air of Richard’s apartment.
“Hey, Pete.”
He had looked up at May with those huge brown eyes that people would say belonged to his mother, but really came from someone else, and he did not say a word. He rarely did.
“There’s something I gotta talk to you about, kiddo,” May said as she sat on the creaky old couch next to him and sighed.
Peter nodded at her. He’d always liked May, at least much more than Penny. He got to see her usually once monthly, but she’d been pulled away from him for the past few visits as she mourned her husband, Ben.
“Your, uh. Your dad. He got into a crash,” said May.
Her voice was soft, hushed, and as Peter turned to her, he could see the tears that had rolled down her cheeks, streaking them with black from her mascara.
“The doctors are doing everything they can, but it’s not looking good.”
Peter had been five years old, in that moment. Five years old for the past 4 months. His Aunt May had been the only one, aside from his father, to get him a birthday card, and she spoke of wanting to meet with him soon.
He doubted this was what she’d had in mind.
May stayed with him through the night, trying to converse with him and doing surprisingly well despite Peter’s lack of answering her. She’d ordered pizza, and when Peter devoured it she’d stroked his hair and smiled down at him like the sun.
She was kinder than the babysitter, and though her eyes were nothing like his own, he felt at home in her arms.
That night she read him a story. It was short, rhythmic, and juvenile. Peter did not tell her that the Itsy Bitsy Spider was anatomically impossible, with its long, spindly limbs and fat, rounded body. Nor did he tell her a spider would likely be able to keep a hold on the “waterspout” despite flooding.
Instead, he pressed his ear to the side of her chest as she read. The mixture of May’s kind voice, her hand in his hair, and the vibrations of her speech resonating through him, starting at the cheek he’d squished against her and ending at the tips of his toes, put him to sleep by the end of the book.
Peter did not manage to sleep through the night.
In the very middle of the night, Peter found himself ripped from sleep. May was speaking to someone on the phone in the kitchen. Her tone was hushed.
The air was tense, he could feel it through the door, surrounding him like humid air on a summer night. It made his nose itch, like right before you sneeze.
May broke the uncomfortable silence that had permeated the apartment.
“Can I at least.. wait until morning to tell him? He’s 5, once you get them up they never go back to bed.” There was a moment's pause, then she spoke again. “Alright. Have a good night, Sir.”
The phone clicked back into its place on the wall and May sighed, long and deep. The couch creaked as it always had, and she began to sniffle.
Peter got up out of his father’s bed, where he had fallen asleep, and to the window.
It was quiet outside.
Not truly silent, as it never really was that way in the city, but it was certainly a much quieter night than usual. No sirens, no parties a few blocks away.
Peter had never been able to see the stars in the city. He could at least see the moon, and on clearer nights, Polaris. When Peter would go upstate on occasion, he’d see skyfuls of stars, like the pictures in his father’s books on constellations. The only thing Peter could see from his window was the Manhattan skyline, lit up and brightening the sky.
The door creaked open, light flooding in from the hall, and May spoke.
“Peter? You’re supposed to be asleep, hon.”
He ran to her, wrapping his arms around her legs. She bent down to be face to face with him, and her eyes searched his. His instinctively flicked away.
“I don’t know if you heard, but.. y-your dad. He died. I’m so sorry, Peter,” May spoke in a whisper, and her voice cracked mid sentence.
Peter knew death. He’d been to Ben’s funeral a few months ago. He’d seen the boys in his class crush spiders and burn ants with magnifying glasses.
He’d seen Richard’s grief all his life, crying and screaming and blaming Peter and the doctors and himself. Peter had seen his father become a hollow shell of a man, working himself, apparently, to death.
Peter waited for the tears to come, like they did whenever his father dared to take him anywhere near Times Square. When he had to eat broccoli or anything slimy, or when everyone in his class would all start screaming at the same time.
“From now on,” May said, swallowing her tears, “you’re gonna stay with me, okay bud?”
Peter nodded. The only tears that pricked at his eyes were from not blinking for a few moments. He wiped them on his sleeve.
“You want some hot cocoa?” May stood up, and she grimaced as her knees popped.
He did, he really did. He tried to tell her, but his mouth just opened and closed like a fish out of water. She picked him up, his head lolling against her shoulder, and he cupped his hands around her ear.
“Marshmallows,” he whispered.
She beamed at him, the smile reaching her eyes in a way it never did for Richard.
“We can do that, kiddo.”