Chapter Text
“You’re sure?”
Bruce sighed, his thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose. “Tony,” he retorted with exasperation, “for the sixth time, if I wasn’t 100% sure I wouldn’t be saying it was safe for him to leave.”
His father stood his ground, eyes roving over the machinery that Peter had finally been disconnected from after six days of constant monitoring. “Okay, but you’ve run every single test that you need to and they’re all clear? He doesn’t need another CT or EKG?”
A snort came from the doorway behind them. “Look, if you don’t want to take your kid home just say it, man.”
Peter turned to face the archer leaning casually against the doorway, smiling as his father glared at the intruder. “Remind me again why you’re here?”
“Moral support,” Clint shot back, winking at Peter as he did.
Peter reached out a hand to gently tug on his dad’s sleeve to get him to look at him. The man turned and his eyes met Peter’s, worry still evident in his father’s furrowed brow. “I’m fine, dad, I promise that I feel okay. I just want to go home and be in my own bed,” he implored, trying to utilize the full strength of what Tony called his doe eyes.
His dad sighed, running a hand over Peter’s shower-damp hair. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road.”
Peter stood up, and despite Clint’s nonchalance and Bruce’s assurance of his health he noticed that they both moved closer with their arms ever so slightly outreached, as though to catch him in case he fell. “I’m fine ,” he repeated, shaking his head as he pulled the worn hoodie in his hands over his head.
Despite spending almost a week in the same room he hadn’t acquired much stuff to bring back upstairs, just a small tote bag that his dad shouldered. Once he finally stepped outside of the medical room Peter let out a sigh of relief, the satisfaction at finally getting out of the overly-sterile environment that had begun to feel stifling, drifting into every fiber of his being.
“I still want to see you tomorrow, Peter, just in case,” Bruce reminded. The dark circles under his uncle’s eyes and the genuine smile on his face had Peter thinking, not for the first time since he had woken up, about what exactly had happened. Bruce laughed at his grimace. “How about we do it at home, though?” he offered in compromise, an offer which Peter readily accepted with a hug.
“Later, squirt,” Clint bid farewell with a ruffle to Peter’s hair. As much as Peter had fought for Cooper to still visit that weekend as planned his pleas had been overruled, and so Clint was returning home for the next few weeks before coming back with Peter’s friend at the end of the month.
Peter and his dad stepped into the elevator, leaving Clint and Bruce behind the closing metal doors. Peter turned to look at his dad; like Bruce, there were purple shadows under his eyes and his hair still looked as though his hands had been raking through it. He hoped that now that they were all finally home his parents would both get some sleep and stop worrying, an irrational guilt creeping at the edges of the happiness he felt. There had been several conversations with Bruce and his parents about how he’d felt when he’d gone to bed, and if he’d felt worse than he’d let on during the evening after his dad had picked him up from school. The answers he’d given them had been honest - no, he hadn’t felt worse when he’d gone to bed, and he didn’t remember waking up in the night and feeling sick. No, he hadn’t lied and omitted any symptoms or pain, and no, he wasn’t certain what it was he’d been bitten by in Oscorp.
Since his mom had arrived she’d refused to leave his side, and the first time she’d slept in their apartment had been the night before when Bruce had promised that Peter would be discharged the following morning with an infinitesimal chance that anything would happen overnight. She’d reluctantly agreed, finally returning to their home upstairs with Morgan’s complaint that, while she loved Uncle Steve, his bedtime storytelling and tucking in left something to be desired for the seven-year old. It didn’t surprise Peter at all that his mother was waiting in front of the elevator doors when they reached their floor, immediately folding him into her arms once he stepped out of the car.
“Hi, baby.”
Peter let himself relish in his mother’s embrace, the familiar lavender and floral scent that was so inherently her not just tickling his nose but filling his senses. It was as though he was pressed so tightly against her that he could hear her heartbeat, the consistent thump-thump-thump a soothing tattoo.
After she pulled back, quietly examining him with eyes casting over his face, she wrapped a slender arm around his shoulder and pulled her against his side as she led him into the kitchen. He felt the smile grow on his face at the sight of the redheaded child seated at the kitchen counter with the array of crayons and paper spread in front of her, totally immersed in her activity and unaware of the presence of the rest of her family behind her.
“Morguna,” their father called, dropping the tote he was carrying with a soft thud , “look who’s home.”
“Peter!” Morgan shrieked enthusiastically, abandoning her coloring and immediately springing down from her perch on the bar stool. The legs of the stool skittered on the tiled floor as she jumped down, and their parents each let out their own hurried reprimand at the seven-year old. Stepping out of his mom’s hold and lowering himself down to his knees, Peter opened his arms and soon found himself with his arms filled with his little sister.
He smiled into her hair as she buried her head in the crook of his neck. “Hi, Mo,” he laughed, his arms wrapped tightly around her tiny frame.
“I missed you.”
The admission was quiet, and Peter could feel the gentle staccato of her heartbeat as he held her to his chest. Like with their mom, it was as though he could hear it, the rhythm a reassuring companion to the feeling of her sweater under his hands and her soft hair against his neck.
Peter swallowed thickly, the confession from his younger sister bringing a prickling behind his eyes.
“I missed you too,” he whispered back, gently leaning back and tucking the errant hair in front of her face behind her ear. “I’m going to sleep in my room tonight, but maybe tomorrow we could have a sleepover?”
“Yes!” The excited yelp had Peter wincing, but the look on Morgan’s face was worth any headache it may have caused. Morgan had come to visit him over the last few days, since he’d regained consciousness, but his dad had told him that she’d read to him while he was out and he wanted nothing more than to erase those memories from her mind.
Their dad came up behind him, a hand coming down to rest on his shoulder. “Alright, how about we move this party to the living room?”
“Can we watch a movie?” Morgan was bouncing on the balls of her feet, the lights on her sneakers flashing brightly in the corner of Peter’s eye.
Their mom walked over to Morgan and placed a hand on Morgan’s shoulder to anchor her to the ground. “I think that’s a great idea, but why don’t we let Peter pick the movie?” she suggested, shifting to pick Morgan up and balance her on her hip.
A groan sounded from behind him. “Okay, which Star Wars do I have to sit through this time?”
Peter rolled his eyes and thrust an elbow backwards in jest, making contact with his dad’s stomach that emitted a yelp out of the man.
The four of them headed into the living room, Peter settling into his usual spot in the middle of the couch with Morgan pressed against his side and his parents sandwiching the two of them.
It’s over , he told the hint of anxiety that thrummed in his head, things can be normal again .
-x-
The realization that things were… different , it came to Peter in stages.
The first indicator was his new sensitivity to environmental sensory input. It was as though he’d been using sunglasses for his whole life and had just taken them off for the first time. Combined with the loudness of the world around him, the sounds that seemed to have been amplified overnight, it took everything in him to not just crawl up under his bed with noise canceling headphones on.
The sticking came next, and was the most alarming. One moment Peter had been pushing his bedroom door closed, the next thing he knew the handle was stuck to his palm and no longer attached to the wood. The same happened with the faucet in his shower, something that was harder to explain away to his dad than the “I don’t know, dad, I guess it was just loose” that he’d used for the door.
There was a disjointed memory from before his field trip of his dad talking about Oscorp’s genetic mutation research that finally stirred in the deep recesses of his mind after he almost upended his desk by pushing his chair away from it. He remembered the giant glass tanks of spiders in the room he’d stumbled into when he’d gotten separated from the group after going to the bathroom, and the sting at the crook of his elbow. From there, like solving the answer at the end of a riddle, everything had unfolded.