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Peter swears there’s never been a December as cold as this.
Logically he knows yes, there probably has, but this year is different, for many reasons, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do to shift the icy feeling in his bones.
The apartment is warm enough, which surprises Peter considering the flimsy windows and bare wooden floor, but he still doubles up on sweaters and spends as much time as he can wrapped up in the electric blanket May had given him the last Christmas they’d shared together, a moment that now seems a whole lifetime ago. She’d given him a pair of bright green fluffy socks for Hanukkah, the last one they shared with Ben, that he wears as often as he can. The left one has a hole in the big toe, so Peter puts them on with extra care each time.
He even buys a few hot water bottles and lines his bed with them.
No matter what Peter does, he’s always cold.
One of the pictures Peter grabbed from the old apartment, his old home, is one of him and May, bundled up in matching hats with bright green pom poms on top, standing in front of the tree at Rockefeller Center, both grinning wide and bright as snow falls around them.
It made his chest hurt to look at it before, and now it feels like his heart is being run through a shredder whenever he sneaks a glance against his better judgement, just like he does with all the other pictures. Ned and MJ at the homecoming dance; a day at the zoo with May for his eighth birthday, polaroids full of goofy faces and warm smiles that he won’t get to see again.
It’s not enough to stop him from swinging past that tree as soon as the lights switch on, or give him the strength to not walk past the donut shop where MJ works, a glimpse of her face somehow simultaneously filling him with warmth and making him ache with loneliness.
Two weeks after… everything, Peter’s got himself three jobs.
Well, technically two. Selling pictures of himself to the Bugle and whatever newspaper seems willing to buy them doesn’t really count as a job. Peter’s not sure what it is really, but it offers somewhat decent money for what he boasts are exclusive photographs of Spider-Man that nobody else will have. Jameson claims he could swipe better off Instagram but buys them anyway, pairing them with a slanderous caption that makes Peter almost regret his decision.
The reassuring weight of folded dollars in his pocket is enough to make him stick to it.
Stacking shelves in a downtown bodega is the main job. The hours aren’t great, just a few short night shifts, but it’s better than nothing. Nobody ever comes in during that time and even if they do, they’re not usually up for conversation, and whoever is working the register is usually half asleep themselves.
So Peter spends a hell of a lot of his time just…not talking. Even his third job, dog walking, something that came about after he pinned his name and number to at least thirty notice boards in various apartment buildings across the city, doesn’t offer much more interaction aside from the odd hello from a friendly person in the park.
The dogs are great though, so that’s a perk.
The Welcome Inn shelter catches Peter’s eye on patrol, exactly ten days before Christmas. He recognises the name from the list of places May had worked with over the last few months, and doesn’t think twice about heading back there the next day. It’s busy inside, every table occupied, the scent of stewed meat thick in the air. There’s people in green aprons rushing around all over, some carrying pitchers of water or coffee, others holding bundles of cutlery or clothing.
A woman with red frizzy hair and bright blue glasses approaches him. "Hi, honey. There’s a bit of a wait but if you hang tight, we’ll get you something warm to eat."
"Oh," Peter says awkwardly, "actually, I was hoping to volunteer."
The woman smiles. "We’ve already got plenty of those at the moment. Christmas is our most popular time. If you check back in a couple of weeks, there might be more - "
"Please." Peter doesn’t mean for the word to come out so desperately. "I just…really wanna help."
She doesn’t believe him. Peter can tell by the way her eyes narrow ever so slightly behind her glasses.
"Okay," she eventually says, and Peter nearly sinks to the floor with relief. "How are you at peeling potatoes?"
Turns out, pretty damn good.
The woman, Layla, gives him a quick run through of everything the following morning, and then leaves him with Dwayne, the man in charge of prep in the kitchen. He’s a big guy with a big laugh, and Peter likes him instantly, that ache of loneliness lessening the tiniest fraction when Dwayne gives him a wide grin and claps him on the back in greeting.
"Good to meet ya, man. Hope you’re ready to work your ass off." He gives Peter an apron to put on and tugs a red Santa hat on over his head. "We like to keep things fun around here, y’know, otherwise folks can get glum real fast. Let’s see what you got."
Super strength and the Peter tingle aren’t much help when it comes to not accidentally shredding his fingers with the peeler once or twice, but he eventually finds his stride.
It’s chopping carrots and leeks the next morning. Peter fills up two cauldron sized pans by himself by 10am, and then spends two hours helping sort through donations of clothing and bedding before heading off for his first dog walk of the day. He chats with anyone and everyone, more than happy to listen to every single story and rant offered to him no matter how mundane.
Part of him wonders if this is wrong. Volunteering is meant to be about helping others, a selfless act, but he’s here to escape, to try and fill the void of loneliness that consumes him more and more everyday, to seek solace in the interactions of others as himself, not Spider-Man.
He goes the entire night without sleep and patrols well past dawn to try and ease the guilt.
Peter sees ghosts everywhere.
They’re strangers, he knows, but sometimes it’s May, brown hair swishing behind her, round glasses glinting in the light; sometimes it’s Ben, wild curls bouncing with every step and a lopsided smile; and sometimes it’s Tony, worn band shirts and flashy shades.
He thinks about Peter-Two and Peter-Three often, feeling a strange sense of longing in their absence.
Happy appears in places Peter knows he’d never be, but he still looks twice just to check.
Ned and MJ are everywhere too it seems; faces in the corner of his eye that make him do a double take, snippets of voices in a crowd that for a split second sound a little familiar.
And then one day, they’re really there.
"All I’m saying is that Home Alone is clearly the most superior Christmas movie," Ned is saying as he struggles into the kitchen with a large sack of potatoes, almost bumping into everyone he passes. "There’s absolutely no contest."
"Oh, sure, watching some rich white kid actively try to murder two men in weirdly creative ways always gets me in the mood for the festive season," MJ replies while following him with a crate of assorted vegetables.
"Those guys were asking for it!"
"Doesn’t make it any less disturbing that an eight year old knows that many ways to fatally injure someone."
Peter, frozen on the spot, feels his face immediately lift into an automatic grin even as his heart plummets into his stomach.
Still bickering, they set up in the only empty space available, which just so happens to be right next to where he’s working. Peter quickly ducks his head, resuming his chopping, wondering if it’s worth cutting a finger off so he can get out of here -
"Hey, dude, help me out here, what’s your take on Home Alone?"
The peeler slips and slices into Peter’s thumb.
"Oh!" he hears MJ exclaim as blood immediately starts to flow, "uh, here, hold on, I’ll get some paper towels - "
"No!" Peter says hurriedly, tucking his bleeding thumb into his other hand. "It’s okay, really, I’ll just - "
But MJ is already rushing off and Ned is right up close, trying to get him to hold his arm up.
"The nurse at school taught me this once, you gotta keep your arm up, it helps with the bleeding - "
"It’s not that bad, Ned - "
Ned pauses in his tugging of Peter’s arm, blinking in confusion. "How do you know my name?"
"Uh…" Peter says dumbly. "I heard M - your friend say it."
Ned’s face creases in disbelief, but MJ’s reappearance prevents further questions as she bustles him aside, offering the paper towels with a look of concern. Already feeling the edges of the cut itching, Peter accepts them anyway and wraps two of them around his thumb.
"You should probably get that looked at," she says.
Peter smiles weakly. "I’m okay."
MJ returns his smile. It’s the smile she used to give him at the beginning when they were just starting to get to know each other, twitchy and a little awkward, but still enough to send tingles up Peter’s spine.
"Okay, well," she points to his hand, "that was…interesting."
"Yeah," Peter laughs, the sound high-pitched and nervous, and then a tear suddenly slips free from his left eye.
MJ’s face falls. "Oh - "
"You okay?" Ned asks, glancing at MJ and sharing a look of concern.
"I’m fine, I’m fine," Peter says as he quickly brushes it away, offering another flimsy smile. "Don’t know where that came from."
"Heyyy, my favourite volunteers!" Dwayne’s booming voice cuts through the silence that follows. "Ready for action?" he asks, giving them all a big grin. “Tonight’s Christmas Eve, our busiest night, y’know." He throws his arms wide. "Special prizes for most saucepans filled and most chopped vegetables, so let’s get slicing and dicing!”
The room seems to burst into frenzied motion, Ned almost falling over his own feet in his haste to get started. MJ keeps her gaze on Peter for a moment longer, dark eyes studying his face thoughtfully, then turns away to start pulling vegetables out of the crate. Peter goes off in search of the first aid box, taking far longer than necessary to wrap a band-aid around the cut that will be gone in a couple of hours.
A cold rush of air from the back door rushes over him as more volunteers hurry inside with boxes and bags of donations. The temptation to run is almost overwhelming, body thrumming with the urge. There’s a reason why he’s stayed away; why he broke his promise to fix everything; why he’s ached with that loneliness for what feels like a lifetime.
It can’t all be for nothing.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Peter begins to walk towards the back door. There’s nothing waiting for him, he knows; nothing but emptiness and haunted thoughts that he can’t dwell on for too long without feeling like he’ll break in two. It’s something that even the responsibility of Spider-Man can’t help, and Peter knows that no matter how much patrolling he gets done tonight, he’ll still go back to his tiny apartment with the same relentless, gnawing ache in his chest.
He carries on walking, resolute in his choice -
But then MJ’s voice and Ned’s laugh break through all the surrounding noise, and Peter’s turning around without even thinking, every part of him subconsciously drawn back towards them, resolve crumbling with every step until he’s back beside them, chopping carrots and listening to them talk about nothing in particular.
It hurts, raw and sharp, but somehow, it feels good too.
"Nope, no way, you’re totally wrong."
MJ throws a piece of parsnip at Ned. "I’m definitely not."
"You’re so - Peter, hey, c’mon, you agree with me, don’t you?"
An hour later, the Home Alone argument is going strong, and Peter has been dragged right into the middle of it. Names have been exchanged, pleasantries shared, and now, if he wants to, he can pretend it’s almost like old times.
"Sorry, dude," Peter gives Ned an apologetic smile. "It’s one of the best, but it’s not the best."
Ned sighs dramatically, then says, "Yeah, you’re more of a It’s a Wonderful Life kinda guy."
Peter freezes, eyes lifting to meet Ned’s wide, startled gaze, then meeting MJ’s frowning face.
"Uh, good guess," he blurts, laughing a little too forcefully.
"Yeah," Ned says slowly, shaking his head. "Really good guess."
Peter goes back to chopping, hands starting to sweat so much that the band-aid begins to come loose.
He can feel MJ’s eyes on him again.
This was a mistake. He’d been blinded by his own selfish need to be close by, to be near them again; the illusion of comfort and familiarity mixing with all the grief, clouding all sense and rational thought.
"We’ve met before," MJ says, no shred of doubt in her voice, "haven’t we?"
He should have known this would happen. After all, MJ had said it herself, right before the spell had wiped her memory; she said she would figure it out again.
The tearful, panicked tone of her words as she insisted she didn’t want to forget; the resigned belief in Ned’s gaze as he accepted Peter’s promise that everything would be okay, that he would come and find them; that final handshake, that final kiss - it all comes barrelling down on top of Peter, punching the breath out of his lungs and breaking any remaining strength he has.
He wants to tell them how much he misses them, even when they’re standing right in front of him. He wants to tell them how he can’t watch any Star Wars movies anymore because it’s not the same without Ned to quote every single line with him; how he dreams of the way MJ’s fingers would brush like butterfly wings against his jaw over and over every time she kissed him; that hardly a minute goes by where he isn’t thinking about them and how he wishes so badly that things were different.
Instead, all Peter can murmur is a quick, "No, no we haven’t," while heat floods his cheeks and his heart pounds like a drumstick against his ribs.
He needs to leave.
"Listen, uh," he begins, setting his knife down, "it’s been great hanging out with you guys tonight, really, but I’ve got some, uh, you know, family stuff, so I’m gonna - " he gestures lamely towards the door.
MJ shakes her head. "No, no, we know you. And you know us. I…"
Her hand, Peter notices, is touching the broken flower around her neck.
"I can feel it. I know it."
Ned’s rubbing his forehead, squinting at Peter. "Yeah, yeah, I do too. Like, deja vu or something, right?”
Eyes burning, Peter begins to back away, hands held up like he’s trying to defend himself. "Seriously, I don’t know what you’re talking - "
"What happened to your thumb?" MJ demands.
"I - I cut it, you saw me…" Peter trails off, eyes focusing on where the band-aid is now hanging off, revealing the freshly healed skin beneath, not a single trace of any wound at all.
Ned’s jaw drops. "Dude…"
There’s nothing else Peter can do but run.
The snow is falling thick and fast, the wind icy and sharp. There had been plenty of warnings about the weather turning bad, but those had done nothing to deter the criminal masses tonight. Since running from Ned and MJ, Peter’s stopped ten robberies, thwarted two attempted stabbings and prevented a drunk guy dressed as Santa causing a collision between three taxis and a semi.
Now, he’s getting abuse thrown at him from a would-be mugger dangling upside down from a streetlight.
"Think you’re so high an’ mighty," the guy sneers as he swings back and forth. "Just an asshole in a Halloween costume."
"I’m not the one trying to rob people, dude," Peter sighs, propping the person the guy had knocked out gently up against a nearby wall. "You really think this is worth a few dollars in someone’s bag?"
"Asssshole," the guy jeers back, face turning more and more purple by the minute.
Peter ignores him, puts a call in to the emergency services, then settles in to wait for them. The snow is falling even harder now, building higher and higher on the ground.
"You’re an assshole," the guy singsongs before lapsing into a raspy laugh.
"Uh huh."
“Everybody thinks so. Everrrrybody hates Spider-Maaaaaan."
Peter glares up at the sky.
Last year, he’d been tucked up on the couch with May in their new apartment, their whole life still in disarray around them only two months after coming back from the dead, the reality of it all still too much to comprehend. They’d exchanged gifts, electric blanket for Peter, emerald green scarf and fleece lined gloves for May, the only things they could comfortably afford, and then had a surprise visit from Happy who brought a small feast for them to share together. He’d invited them to come along to the Stark-Potts cabin for a proper Christmas dinner but Peter, still haunted and scraped raw by the loss of Tony, had politely refused, seeking comfort in May’s presence and texts from Ned instead.
This year was supposed to be different. That’s what May had said. They’d do things properly next time to make up for it, a Christmas and Hanukkah combo to put all the others they’d shared to shame.
It’s tomorrow, less than a couple of hours away, and May is buried in the ground and Peter is completely alone.
"Spider-Man’s an asssshooooole!" the guy hollers at the top of his lungs just as two police cars round the corner, lights flashing.
Peter fires a web and pulls himself up onto the nearest rooftop, racing through the thick layers of snow as quickly as he can, desperate to outrun the grip of sorrow that’s trying to wrap its fingers around his neck, his lungs, his heart.
He swings high and falls fast, half blinded by the snow and the tears stinging his eyes; runs and runs until he’s breathless and numb all over, until he finds another person to help, another problem to fix that isn’t his.
How or when he ends up on the roof of Midtown, Peter doesn’t know. All he knows is that there’s blood on his knuckles, a rip in the side of his suit, it’s Christmas and he’s all alone.
This is his choice. It’s the right one, he knows it is. It's why he ran from the shelter, from Ned and MJ, left them confused and wondering instead of just telling them the truth. They’ll forget about it soon enough, dismiss it as some really weird moment of deja vu, a mystery to wonder about every now and then, and they’ll be safer for it.
It's the right choice.
But a whispered, broken plea of, "Please," still leaves his frozen lips anyway, escaping into the night in a misty cloud of breath. “Please…" he says again, every part of him seizing up in desperation, far too old to believe in miracles but still unable to truly stop himself from trying anyway, all of him yearning for things to change against his better judgement, feeling the loss and the sadness all the way down to the tips of his toes as he says it one more time. "Please."
Nothing but the sounds of the city answer him.
With a bitter laugh, Peter seeks out the tiniest patch of roof that has only the thinnest layer of snow on top, sinks down heavily and tucks his legs to his chest. He lets his mask dangle from his fingers and rests his face atop his knees.
Exhaustion rapidly creeps up on him as he sits there, staring at nothing until his eyes finally close.
He doesn’t sleep so much as drift, hazy memories mixing with images that can only be dreams; thoughts that hurt as much as they comfort, familiar faces smiling at him and voices calling out his name.
Peter…
Peter…
Peter’s eyes snap open as he jolts to his feet, almost slipping sideways, chest heaving. Morning is rapidly approaching now, the sky washed pink and orange with the imminent sunrise, not a single snow cloud to be seen.
“Peter?"
He jumps again, one of the voices from his dream so clear, so real, accompanied by two racing heartbeats, and he whirls around to see MJ and Ned standing by the entrance ladder.
He stares at them, something fragile weaving together inside his chest, a million questions already forming on his tongue as he tries to figure out what they’re doing here.
But then Peter notices the tears on MJ’s cheeks, the wobbly smile forming on Ned’s lips even as he cries too, the matching glow of warmth in their eyes, and Peter knows without having to even ask.
With only the slightest hesitation in the first step, Peter’s running to them, the first burst of sunlight breaking open and painting them golden, the best sight he could ever see, and they meet him halfway, arms knocking clumsily together as they fight to pull each other as close as possible.
"What - how - "
"You promised!" Ned is half yelling, squeezing him tightly around the ribs. "You promised!"
"I know, I know, I’m sorry - "
"Are you okay?" MJ asks, leaning back to see his face, and Peter kisses her immediately, one hand buried in her hair, his other arm practically holding Ned in a headlock with the ferocity of their shared embrace.
"I can’t believe you’re here - " Peter pants as he breaks the kiss, adjusting his hold to look at both of them properly. "I - "
"You idiot," MJ cries through a weak smile, "you stupid, self-sacrificing idiot."
"That’s me," Peter laughs, tears of his own now falling freely, not caring how any of this is possible because all that matters is that it’s real. "How did you guys - "
"Remember?" MJ shakes her head. "I couldn’t stop thinking about you last night, about what happened at the shelter. I fell asleep and then woke up a few hours later and," she shrugs, smile growing, fingers playing with the ends of Peter’s hair, "you were there again."
"This is magic, right?" Ned says. "I mean I’m totally magic so I should know but, just so we’re all clear…it’s magic?"
Peter thinks of last night, of the way he’d pleaded with something, someone, the universe maybe, and says, "Yeah, I think so. I mean weirder things have happened, right?"
Ned squeezes him again. "If I wasn’t so happy to see you right now, I’d kick your ass, dude," he threatens, sniffling loudly.
Peter laughs once more, as does MJ, all three of them laughing together between hitching sobs and steadying breaths, readjusting their hold of one another so they can rest their heads together, impossible to tell where one of them begins and another ends.
There’s so much to talk about, so many things Peter wants to tell them, but right now, they’re together, and that’s enough.
"Merry Christmas," MJ eventually murmurs, and Peter and Ned echo her words.
The sun grows higher in the sky, more light falling upon them, and suddenly, Peter doesn’t feel so cold anymore.