Peter sighed as he dragged himself into the apartment at a quarter past eight. Weasel finding out about his other "part-time job" was already a lot, and adding Wade into the equation...

No one says a thing for a long while.

Which is troubling, because that meant Wade hasn't said a thing for a long while. He's just standing there with a web on his face, Peter's wrist in a loose grip, and the silence in Sister Margaret's slowly growing thicker and thicker.

Then.

"I thought the webs came out your butt."

All the tension flees out Peter's body as he pulls his arm back and braces himself on his knees.

"... Yeah, I also thought the webs were butt-made," Weasel agrees apologetically.

"Can—Can we just take care of these guys first? Please?" Peter pleads. He picks the two bodies back up as Wade struggles to scrape the synthetic web from his mask eyes. "I'll tie them up and put them in the back and, Mr. Weasel, can you make the call? Wade, don't pull so hard you're really going to hurt yourself—"

Wade took it really well. He pulled a Ned and asked if he laid eggs or ate bugs for breakfast or if he secretly had six other arms that he was hiding and it'd be the wildest thing if he did, and Peter had been so relieved that Wade was someone he could trust that he readily agreed to the man's request to dangle him from the ceiling before the bar opened for the night.

Peter closed the front door behind and tossed his backpack on the couch as he made a beeline towards the kitchen. Wade might not have known how old he really was, but he couldn't hide how young he looked and yet, there was no judgment. Just like Weasel.

That alone warmed his chest like nothing else.

He dug around the fridge. It would just be a sandwich or six for dinner tonight, not that he was complaining, and after he made the first one he balanced his butter knife on the open mayonnaise jar and wandered back into the living room with one hand full of bread and the other slung in his hoodie pocket.

May wouldn't be back for another hour, maybe? And it was Tuesday so she'd get dinner with some of her co-workers, so she wouldn't be hungry when she got back. Not that he knew how to cook all that well, but Granny Sal sometimes wrangled him into being her sous chef when the bar was at its busiest, and he knew a thing or two about how to keep tortilla chips from getting too soggy.

He plopped down on the couch with a sigh and took a bite of his sandwich. The black of the TV screen stared back at him, as do all the pictures that line up on the shelves. Him, May, Ben, Dad, Mom... Their stares were heavy, frozen in moments that he'd half almost forgotten and half he tried to remember on the days his broken bones hurt a little more.

His gaze drifted back to his perfectly normal hands.

"What the heck did I do that night?" he mumbled.

He didn't imagine the blue. He didn't. He'd been dead-tired and it was three in the morning but he knew what he saw and he knew what he felt.

And in that moment, his hands didn't feel the winter cold.

Whatever happened to him wasn't an effect of the spider bite. Spiders were cold-blooded creatures that lessened their activity to dormancy when temperatures dropped. And for a while, that was true for him too. Since the bite he'd taken to wearing layers upon layers in the colder months, making sure to never stay outside for too long unless he passed out and went into hibernation in the middle of the street.

Peter narrowed his eyes.

Maybe it was... sometime after the Vulture incident that things started to change? From the instance atop the ferris wheel in his old jumpsuit covered in cuts and scars and burns, the cold hadn't bothered him as much. Did it? The three layers he usually wore in the apartment in the freezing, heater-less months started to get too warm for him and the five layers he squeezed himself into whenever he went into the snow were scaled down to two, or three if he counted the short sleeves under his hoodies.

He bit his lip and stood, cramming the last bit of crusts into his mouth before he tucked his fingers under his arms and began to pace alongside the coffee table.

Why didn't he think anything was weird back then? Was he really that caught up in Spider-Man and school and his job that he didn't notice that something had gone so wrong that he wasn't even feeling cold anymore. And that was the trigger of whatever this was, wasn't it? The cold. Not air conditioning cold or even New York December cold, but extreme cold? That he needed physical contact with?

No, that didn't make any sense. If extreme cold affected him now, why wouldn't it have affected him before? Was there some chemical he inhaled during his fight on Coney Island? If it was airborne it would've spread to the city and if it was something else in the sand or the flames, it would've spread to Happy and the other personnel that swarmed the crash site.

Peter's gaze cut back to the frames. He walked up to one; a photo of a smiling Richard and Mary in their lab coats as they carried a baby him in their arms.

Was there an external influence that affected him because he was enhanced? Maybe. But there was a chance that something else within the same time frame affected him.

He wiped some dust off the frame glass.

... Could it be genetic? Triggered by stressors? Wade once told him that people with the mutant gene could be forced to express it through extreme mental and physical experiences, but—

"Peter? Baby? You're back early."

His head jerked up. May shrugged off her coat by the doorway, her kind eyes concerned as she took in his slouched shoulders and mussed hair. Peter quickly snatched his hand back and brushed his crumb-covered fingers on his jeans.

"Hey, May. My boss texted me earlier and said he needed me to come to help with some inventory stuff before they opened. And he made sure to pay me overtime, so."

The three hundred dollar wad in his pants weighed heavy. He'd have to find a way to sneak it into his aunt's savings later.

"Your boss, Mr. Westley, right?"

"Yup."

Nope.

"Oh, it's nice that you decided to go in. Look at you, being all responsible and stuff," she joked. She stepped into the kitchen to make herself some of her nightly black tea. "I thought you'd be out late, you know." She spun around and did the same arm wiggles Ned did earlier. "Thwip thwip."

"Ugh, you too?"

"What? I did a perfect imitation," she smiled. It tapered off when Peter turned towards the counter to make another sandwich. His movements were quick and smooth, not that he'd ever been a clumsy child, but, "Sweetie?" She dunked her tea bag in her purple mug before running a hand through his hair. "Is something up?"

He smeared a line of mayo on his bread. "No, but, uh. Just kinda scatterbrained."

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"It's... I was just thinking about some genetics stuff before you got back. I read a paper a couple days ago about comparing differences in kids who are raised by biological parents and adoptive parents," he said. He hated how the lies flow easier on his tongue nowadays. How he has to keep lying to May even after he promised her no more secrets. "It was a pretty interesting study."

Her hand paused as she reached for the honey before she cleared her throat and grabbed the bottle. "Yeah? What kind of study did they do?"

"For the first one they looked into two different groups: children raised by their biological parents and children raised by their adoptive ones," Peter fibbed. Come on, Parker. If you can bullshit your English papers, you can bullshit this study. "They checked factors like income, history of mental illness, environment, things like that to keep the subjects as neutral to each other as possible. Then they followed the families throughout their lives and documented milestones in emotional development like death in the family and physical developments like diseases. Just stuff like that." You're losing it. Think of something out of the box. Something interesting! "Um, if they e-ever do another study, I was thinking of other ways they could change it up. W-What if they look more into how adoptive parents deal with genetic disorders or predisposed conditions from their biological families?" Dial it back! Getting too real! "Maybe look at how well different families in different situations react to stuff like that. Would you think that'd be a cool experiment, May?"

He glanced up, expecting another question about the paper or another question about if that's really what he was thinking about, but his aunt had this unfocused expression about her; that she looked at him like he was so, so far away.

His stomach sunk. "... May?"

She blinked rapidly and set her hand on his cheek. "Sorry, you reminded me of something and I..." A heavy sigh fell out of her chest and she took a step back. "Wait for me on the couch, Peter. I have to get something real quick."

When she disappeared from view, he stared down at his half-made sandwich and the sad looking slice of ham he didn't even get to put down.

Whatever this was better not be as bad as the turning blue thing. He didn't know how much more he could take.

But he forced himself to sit back on the couch and waited until May came back still dressed in her maroon scrubs. A round box of old wood was clutched in her hands, delicately carved and intricately designed. Serpents weaved around the sides amongst patterned flowers and wolves and horses, and when she placed one leg against a couch cushion and took a seat, he saw the single, branching tree designed on the top.

"What... What do you remember about your parents?" May ventured.

"I know they were scientists. Dad was a geneticist, Mom was a molecular biologist. Um, and all those things you and Ben used to tell me," he answered. Was it bad that he didn't know more? "But like what I actually remember from when I was younger? Not a lot, s-sorry."

"No, no, don't be sorry. It's not your fault," she said, and her grip tightened around the box. "Before we get into this, I want you to know that Richard and Mary loved you with all they had."

"Oh, yeah. I know." He never once doubted his parents' love for him, and for all he could remember, it was all warm hugs and forehead kisses and holding hands while crossing the street. "Did something go wrong? I mean, before you guys took me in?"

"I wouldn't say it was wrong, but... you get to decide this one, kiddo." May tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and exhaled through her nose. "You weren't Mary's. She loved you like you were her own, but Richard met someone at one of those big science conventions before they started dating. He only found out about you when you were almost eight months old, I think, and by then him and Mary were already married."

Peter's teeth clacked together at the force of his jaw tensing; his fists were clenched in his lap and his eyes blew wide. He could hear people chatting on the sidewalk floors below, cars idling in the lots, and his own heartbeat in his ears.

May plowed forward, ripping off the rest of the bandage.

"I don't know anything about your biological mother. I don't think anyone does. But when she came forward to introduce you to Richard and Mary, they fell in love with you and eventually came to some sort of visitation agreement. Your mother had you most of the time, but every now and again she would disappear without a word and then come back acting like she hadn't gone away in the first place. It drove Richard crazy." She sighed. "Lora. We never did find out a surname, either. She was so secretive and tight-lipped, it was like all she ever said was a riddle."

Peter finally managed to unhook his jaw, and a familiar bitterness wormed through his chest. Thick, suffocating. "But she didn't want me, huh?"

"No, baby, look at me. Look at me, please?" He raised his head reluctantly. "Lora loved you. She loved you so much that it almost hurt seeing how carefully she held you, how close she'd keep you. And whenever she looked at you, Peter? It was like you were her stars." She sniffed and wiped a stray tear. "I'd only met her a handful of times, but that was enough to know you were her whole world."

"Then why am I just finding out about her now?!"

"Because..."

"Full custody?" Richard repeats. Peter, a mere week away from his first birthday, blows spit bubbles while transfixed by the utensils on the table. His stubby little fingers reach for one, and Ben quickly pushes them away. He bounces the boy on his knee to keep him from crying, eyes darting back and forth between his brother and the woman standing at the window. "I—You don't want him anymore?!"

Lora casts her eyes over her shoulder, and one look from that piercing green gaze is enough to shoot a bolt of uneasiness through the other four adults in the room. Peter babbles on, oblivious. "Do not accuse me of such," she hisses. Her hair spills just past her shoulders like a brush stroke of ink. "That child is the breath of my lungs, and should he ever perish, I shall follow."

May gulps. Damn, why was this woman always so intense? Dressing in black suits, strutting in those stiletto heels that could cut a man, wearing a face that's never friendly unless she was planting black lipstick kisses all over Peter's soft tufted hair.

"W-We would love to have him full-time," Mary intervenes. "We were thinking about children and were considering where that put Peter, but it's... if you love him so much, why give him up? The joint custody agreement had been going along so well, unless—"

"Had I any other option, I would stay," Lora informs stiffly. But one look at Peter and that infallible mask of hers chips away. "My... father has been wondering about my bouts of absences. He can never know of Peter."

Richard frowns. "Why not?"

Lora strides over to Ben to brush a finger along her son's chubby pink cheeks. The baby squeals, giggling and batting it away. May can see the other woman's face clearly here, and there's something about the way she looks at Peter that's so careful. So protective. So miserable.

"Because he—my father—would kill him."

"You'd think she was exaggerating, but she said it with such certainty that it started to scare Ben." May shook her head. "Lora disappeared after turning over all your documents and never came back. She left no number, no way of contact, no nothing. It's as if she wiped herself off the face of the earth." She held out the box, and her heart clenched at how Peter's hands shook as he took it. "But she did leave you this. And she said only for you to open it if you ever decide you want to see her again."

Faint horror shone in Peter's eyes as he traced one of the branches on the carved tree.

"Oh, Peter, I'm so sorry. I—I was waiting until you were old enough to understand. Whatever you decide about Lora is your decision and whatever you want to do, I'll support you. God, I should've told you sooner—"

"No, it's..." Peter cleared his throat and wiped his face with his sleeve as he stumbled to a stand. He knocked his knee against the coffee table, but his hands stayed clamped firmly around the box. "It's fine."

He thought of blue hands, mercenaries, masked menaces, a mother he never knew, a grandfather who wanted him dead.

No one said a thing for a long while.

"C-Can I think about this in my room?" His voice cracked. "Please."

"Of course, baby."

After he'd gone to his room, after she'd heard his door shut with a soft click, after she pretended to think he hadn't snuck out his window to climb up to the roof to sort out his confusion and grief, she went back to the kitchen for her cold mug of tea, sat down at the dinner table, and tried not to cry.

::

Hundreds of thousands of light years away, a pair of gold eyes flickered.