say whatever you feel
Peter shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his fingers twitching against the edge of the table. MJ and Ned stared at him expectantly – she was still in her work uniform, but the shop was relatively quiet again.
Peter had no idea what to tell them.
"So," MJ started, her voice calm but piercing, like it always was. "You want to tell us what’s going on now, or are you going to keep dodging the question like you did the last two times?"
Peter opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. Instead, his gaze darted to Ned, who was leaning forward with his lips pursed.
"Seriously, dude," Ned said, his tone softer than MJ's but no less insistent. "What happened? How do you know Spider-Man? And why won’t you–" he paused, like the words were hard to get out, "why won’t you tell us the whole story?"
Peter’s stomach twisted. How was he supposed to explain it without giving too much away? He could only sort of dance around the fact that he’d been caught in the crossfire, but the thought of actually giving his identity away to people who didn’t know him (his chest hurt at the thought) was enough to make his skin itch. Ideally, they’d get their memories back before he needed to tell them. They’d know when they knew him.
“I…” he started, his voice trailing off as the weight of their stares bore down on him. He felt like a bug under a magnifying glass. “It’s… complicated.”
MJ raised an eyebrow. “Complicated.”
Peter nodded, pointedly ignoring their gazes. “Yeah. Really complicated.”
“That’s not an answer,” MJ shot back, crossing her arms. “Why do I feel like every time we hang out, I’m only getting half the story? Like… like there’s this big gap I can’t fill, and you know what it is, but you won’t tell us.”
Peter looked down at the table, his fingers tracing invisible patterns on the surface. He couldn’t tell them now. Not just because it would undo everything he’d fought to protect, but because he didn’t know if they’d forgive him for it.
“Pete,” Ned said gently. “We’re not mad. We just… we’re trying to understand. It’s like…” He hesitated, glancing at MJ for backup. “It’s like we’re supposed to know you, you know? Like we already did know you, but it’s gone. And you’re acting like it’s normal, but it’s not normal for us. It’s not normal at all.”
Peter swallowed hard, his throat dry. He wished he had something – anything – that would make this easier. But he didn’t.
“I…” he started again, fumbling for words. “I really wish I could explain it. I do. But it’s just… it’s not something I can talk about.”
MJ narrowed her eyes. “Why not?”
“Because it’s dangerous!” The words slipped out before he could stop them, his voice a little too loud for the quiet café. A few heads turned in their direction, and Peter immediately shrank back into his seat, lowering his voice. “It’s dangerous, okay? I’m not trying to keep you in the dark, but there’s stuff… stuff you’re better off not knowing.” MJ’s brow flattened, unimpressed. “You will know,” he rushed to correct. “But I’m not sure if something I can just explain. I think… I think it’s better if you guys just got your memories back, so you have the whole story.”
“We can have the whole story if you just tell us.” MJ stared at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. There was a horrible moment of tension that made Peter want to hide, but then his phone buzzed on the table, breaking the tension.
Peter snatched it up and opened the screen and saw exactly what he needed: a notification from Foggy.
“Sorry, I – uh, I gotta go,” he blurted, pushing back his chair. “Work emergency.”
“Work emergency?” MJ repeated, her tone skeptical.
“Yeah, uh, big emergency,” Peter lied, grabbing his coat and slinging it over his shoulder. “Huge. Office is chaos right now, and they need me. You know how it is. I’ll, um, I’ll text you guys later!”
Before either of them could protest, he turned and made his way out of the door, the bell jingling above his head as he practically sprinted down the street.
That went awfully.
—
Peter crouched in the middle of the main room, surrounded by the disassembled pieces of the printer. Ink streaked across his hands, smudged on his shirt, and dotted his cheeks. He probably looked ridiculous, but he was too far into the mess to care. He was getting paid for this. The least he could do was fix it despite the mess.
“Why don’t you just get a new one?” Peter muttered, yanking another stubborn component free. “I mean, no offense. And I’d really like to keep my job, actually. Ignore me - keep your old, awful printer.”
Foggy, leaning against the door frame, let out a laugh. “We would if we could. Honestly, it’s probably cheaper to keep you around than to buy another one. Have you seen the price of Braille and ink printers?”
Peter blinked, pausing mid-screwdriver twist. “Can’t say I have.”
“Good. Don’t look,” Foggy said, letting out a puff of air and scrubbing at his eyes tiredly. “The number of zeros will make you cry.”
Peter grimaced, glancing over his shoulder briefly. “Noted.” He turned back to the printer, its guts spilled across the desk like some unfortunate patient on an operating table. He poked at the tangled mess of wires and rollers with a sigh, the faint smear of ink smudging his cheek further as he scratched at his face absentmindedly.
“Hey, kid,” Foggy called out, peeking his head around the corner. “You’re good to go early today. No need to stick around if you’ve already fixed that thing.”
Looking up from the printer, Peter blinked, ink-stained fingers poised over the disassembled gears. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.” Foggy grinned. “Unless you’ve got some burning desire to make another coffee run or wrestle with the copier again.”
Peter huffed out a laugh, standing and wiping his hands on a rag. “I think I’ll pass.”
Foggy waved him off with a mock salute, disappearing back down the hall. Peter packed up his tools, feeling a strange mix of relief and guilt tugging at him. Leaving early meant more time to himself, but it also meant less pay. Whatever. He’d stay until he finished with the printer.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out, the bright screen illuminating the smudge of ink still clinging to his thumb.
MJ: We’re grabbing coffee again. Come by if you’re free. You owe us some answers.
Peter stared at the message for a long moment, his stomach twisting. He wanted to respond, to say yes, I’ll come - but what could he tell them that wouldn’t unravel everything?
A second buzz.
Ned: Seriously, dude. We’re not mad. We just want to understand.
Peter sighed, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. He hated this - hated how much they still cared despite them not remembering it all. He hated how much he wanted to tell them everything. But he couldn’t.
“Something on your mind?” Matt’s voice brought him back to the present.
Peter jumped at the sound of Matt’s voice, shoved his phone back into his pocket, and forced a smile as he returned to the printer. “Nah, just… a lot going on.”
—
Matt wasn’t convinced.
He tilted his head slightly, listening. The subtle shift in Peter’s breathing, the quickened pace of his heart. Matt folded his arms, leaning casually against his desk. “You sure? You’ve seemed... distracted lately.”
Peter shrugged, his ink-stained fingers gesturing vaguely at the mess of printer parts spread out before him. “It’s nothing. Just tired.”
Matt considered pressing further but chose a different tack. “The printer can wait, you know. It’s not going anywhere.”
Peter let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, but Foggy might cry if I don’t fix it.”
Raising an eyebrow, Matt smirked faintly. “I think we’ll survive one day without a working printer. Besides, I was thinking - maybe you could use a break.”
That was an understatement.
Now that he was in the office more, Matt had noticed that he was hurt more often than not. He always had a faint metallic tang, a quiet rustle of bandages under his clothes. It was concerning. But he couldn’t exactly say that Peter should take a break because he could smell the injuries on him - even less that he could hear when he was lying, too.
All Matt could do was let him.
Peter paused, glancing over at Matt as though he wasn’t sure where this was going. “A break?”
“Yeah.” Matt straightened, his tone casual but deliberate. “I was heading to church for a bit. Thought you might want to come along.”
Peter blinked, caught off guard. “Church? Uh…” He scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, no offense, but… why me? I’m not exactly religious.”
“You don’t have to be,” Matt said smoothly. “It’s just a quiet place to think. No pressure, of course. But the offer’s there.”
“I’m not saying no,” Peter said after a moment, “But why ask me to come? I mean… I’m just a random intern.”
Matt turned his head toward Peter, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Because you seem nice. And you looked like you could use a friend.”
Peter blinked, his shoulders slumping slightly as though the words had disarmed him. For a moment, he didn’t respond, simply fiddling with the dissected computer parts. “Thanks,” he said finally, looking back at the printer before glancing back up in Matt’s direction. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally, his voice subdued. “I’ve got nowhere else to go after this. Why not?”
As they stepped out onto the street, Peter reached for Matt’s elbow. It was a cautious, almost hesitant gesture, but it was there nonetheless. Matt didn’t need the help navigating, but he let Peter guide him, appreciating the thought behind it.
They walked in relative silence at first, but all he could focus on was Peter - the faint metallic tang of blood that still lingered on him, the subtle winces in his movements, the uneven rhythm of his steps. He was hurt - again. And yet, Matt couldn’t figure out why.
“I never really had the chance to get into religion,” Peter said after a few minutes of quiet walking, scratching the back of his neck. “I was just never exposed to it, which I guess I’m grateful for. I mean, not that it’s not helpful for some people, it’s just-”
“People don’t handle the teaching of religion very well,” Matt finished. “I get it. A lot of places like to scare kids into submission, or teach them things that aren’t true. They use Christianity as a tool for their gain.”
Peter nodded, extremely glad he didn’t have to be the one to dig himself out of the pit that was religious conversation. “Yeah,” he concluded. “Yeah, I’m happy I wasn’t forced into anything. My Uncle Ben was Jewish and Aunt May was Catholic. We never really went to church or synagogue, mostly because Ben thought it was boring. I mean, I went once for Ben's funeral but I guess I wasn’t really paying attention. He was right. It was boring.”
“Fair.” Matt looked straight ahead as they walked, focusing on navigating with his cane. “You said they’re both dead?”
Peter sucked in a breath as if to prepared himself for the conversation. “Yeah uh… with Ben it was a robbery gone wrong. He was shot and he bled out in the road by our apartment. I was there too.”
Matt’s face twitched, letting the first perceptible change in his expression since they had begun walking show. “Jesus.”
“And Aunt May died last year. She…” He seemed to be grasping for the words to describe it. Odd. Finally, he settled on: “It was a freak accident.”
A freak accident. He was obviously avoiding the whole truth, but there were no indicators that it was an outright fib. Maybe Matt shouldn’t have pushed him to talk about this. “I guess ‘sorry for your loss’ doesn’t really cut it?”
“No,” Peter said. “No, I guess not.”
—
Matt understood that church wasn’t for everyone. Sitting in one place for an extended period of time could leave one stuck in their thoughts. For him, it was a time of reflection and peace. For some, it was torture.
It didn’t take super senses to recognize how nervous the kid was. He could smell the sweat that had formed on his brow, presumably not a product of the early summer air. Peter’s leg was bouncing rhythmically, and his right hand gripped his jeans, twisting the fabric.
The sound of footsteps partially impeded by a floor-length skirt permeated Matt’s consciousness, and his attention turned to a nun carrying a small woven basket. She was zig-zagging from across the aisle and was approaching their pew. Peter had turned his head, and taking into account various indicators, he seemed confused.
A moment later, Matt felt a tap on his shoulder. “There’s a woman in all-black with a basket,” Peter whispered. He sounded nervous. There was that familiar hummingbird heartbeat that made Matt feel a little bad for him. Most people were nervous their first time in church, mostly out of fear of accidentally offending someone. “Do I need to, like, do anything?”
Matt smiled. “That’s the donation box. Everything collected in there goes to the church treasury. Usually, part of it is donated to charity, but that’s the treasury’s decision,” he explained, flipping open his wallet and extracting a few bills. “You don’t have to donate if you don’t want to.”
“Yeah, no, I got that,” Peter said distractedly, digging in his pockets for what sounded like crumpled loose cash. He still sounded nervous. “But the lady carrying it – that’s a real-life nun? Like from The Sound of Music ?”
Matt laughed softly. He smiled in the general direction of the nun, placing his money in the basket. She thanked him and turned to Peter, who did the same with the bills he had scrounged up. He heard Peter's hand move towards the basket, but instead of the sound of more notes being dropped into the pile, there was a sharp intake of breath.
Suddenly, Peter’s heart rate jumped.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I just–” Coins clattered to the floor and paper fluttered in the air.
“What are you doing?” came the shrill voice of the nun in front of them, her skirts brushing against the floor.
“I’m sorry!” Peter blurted, “I didn't mean to, I just – it got stuck or something, I’m sorry sister or mother or whichever is the one, I don't know–”
Was his hand… stuck to the money?
“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that,” the nun hissed. “I cannot believe you’d steal from a donation box, then lie so brazenly to my face. I’ll-”
“Sister Cecelia,” Matt cut in smoothly while Peter moved to peel off whatever cash was stuck to his hand.
The weirdest part was that Matt could hear something being pulled off of Peter’s skin, like thin velcro, maybe like dried glue that covered school children’s hands. It was weird to describe, but it was there. And Peter didn’t seem to be someone who would so obviously steal like that. He definitely hadn’t lied to her, either, and his heart rate was picking up in fear and embarrassment and something else, so Matt knew he needed to step in for him, if only out of pity.
“Peter is new here,” Matt said, and the woman’s attention snapped to him. “He’s attending with me; I asked him to visit.”
“Yep,” Peter let out a nervous bleat of laughter, and his hand retreated from the basket. “First time.”
The woman was staring daggers at Peter, if the way the boy shrunk in on himself beside him was any indication. The rest of the congregation was quiet, and Matt could practically feel the gazes of the surrounding people boring into the two of them.
When she said nothing else and continued on her way, Peter let out an exhausted breath. Matt only felt a little bad for him.
—
“Okay,” Peter said as the pair stepped outside, wringing his hands. “Okay, okay. I can never go back there now."
“Well,” Matt countered calmly, extending his cane to its longest position, “you can always confess.” He wasn’t sure the kid knew the ins and outs of confession and the prayers it entailed, but making him less stressed about the prospect of eternal damnation was his current objective.
“I mean, I guess,” Peter shrugged. “But I don’t know much about that. Is that all you need to do? You just need to talk to a guy and he forgives you or whatever?” he winced. “Not to be rude, I mean. I’m bad at this. No offense.”
“None taken,” Matt replied. “And it’s a little more complicated than that. The priest acts as a conduit, so it’s not him that forgives you, but God. And if you mean it, you’re forgiven.”
“For anything?” Peter asked after a moment, and Matt nodded in reply as they continued to walk. “Wait,” Peter said, an air of disbelief in his voice, “so I can just apologize and God will let me into wherever the people who don’t accidentally try to steal money from a donation box go?”
“Pretty much,” Matt said, shrugging. “Forgiveness is one of the most basic tenets of Catholicism.”
“So even if I killed someone God wouldn’t be mad? As long as I apologized for it?”
Matt grinned. “This is a hypothetical, right? You haven’t killed anyone? You don’t need an amazing couple of defense attorneys to swoop in and save you?”
Tu-dumTu-dumTu-dumTu-dum-
“No.”
A lie.
That was a lie.
Peter was lying about–
“Hey,” Matt said after a beat, trying to retain his composure. Surely the universe didn’t expect him to go back to his desk for six more hours of billing and paperwork after finding out his intern might have killed someone. “Are you hungry? My treat.”
Peter hesitated, looking unsure, before shifting and conceding. “I mean… yeah, I guess. Thanks.”
Matt didn’t need enhanced senses to tell Peter felt guilty about it. The kid always seemed to be teetering between trying not to take up too much space and apologizing for existing. In addition, Peter was starving - always hungry, yet never eating enough. The only time Matt saw him eat was when Karen practically force-fed him at her desk, usually something she brought in from home. He never brought his own lunch and never joined them for coffee runs.
Matt had silently filed that observation away and mentally doubled the snack budget for the office. By coincidence. Not because he cared, or anything.
The café they ended up in was a small, tucked-away spot that Matt liked to frequent. It wasn’t a fancy place, but it was clean and warm and absolutely one of his favorites. Whenever he stepped inside, he could feel the change in the atmosphere almost immediately – less tension in the air, fewer hurried footsteps. It was calming, and it was one of the quieter places in the neighborhood.
Their waitress arrived after a few moments, and Peter’s demeanor shifted slightly, brightening with recognition. “Naomi?”
“Peter?” she replied, her tone lifting, surprised but not unpleasantly so.
Matt tilted his head, listening as they exchanged a brief, almost awkward greeting. Naomi sounded younger than him, more tired, maybe – but she was genuinely warm when speaking to Peter. “Good to see you doing better,” he said earnestly.
Naomi hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure how to respond, then gave a small laugh. “You too.” Matt could hear her smile as she stepped away with their order – Matt’s usual, just doubled – her footsteps fading toward the kitchen.
“Who was that?” Matt asked, keeping his tone casual but curious.
Peter shifted in his seat. “An old colleague.” The inflection in his voice rose slightly, but Matt couldn’t detect any dishonesty. “If you could even call it that, I guess. We both worked this other job and… she walked out with me. I’m glad she’s doing better now.”
“She walked out?” Matt echoed, picking up on the phrasing. “How bad was the place if you walked out too?”
Peter winced audibly, the sound of him scratching the back of his neck following close behind. “Not that bad,” he replied, but the lie was obvious. “It… just wasn’t meant to be.” Matt turned his head in Peter’s direction, unimpressed. He didn’t need his heightened senses to know the kid was dodging the truth. Peter caved after a beat. “I got fired,” he admitted. That, at least, rang true.
Matt frowned, still turning the conversation over in his head. “What kind of job was it?”
Peter shrugged, trying for nonchalance but missing the mark entirely. “Just dishwashing,” he said quickly. “You know, shit boss, long hours, the usual.” There it was – a nervous uptick in Peter’s heart, almost imperceptible, but Matt caught it. Peter must’ve realized it too because he rushed to add, “Sorry, I shouldn’t be complaining about previous managers in front of my current boss. That feels crazy disrespectful.”
“Peter,” Matt interrupted gently, taking pity on him, “I’ve had bad bosses too. I get it.”
Peter exhaled sharply, the tension in his shoulders visibly unwinding as if Matt’s understanding had lifted some invisible weight. “Thanks,” he murmured, offering a small, genuine smile.
Matt tilted his head toward Peter. “You don’t eat much, do you?”
Peter blinked, caught off guard by the directness. “Uh, I eat,” he replied quickly, though the way his voice jumped made it sound more like a defense than the truth. “I just… forget sometimes. Busy, you know?”
Matt didn’t press, though the way Peter’s stomach growled quietly told him everything he needed to know.
The food arrived quickly, carried by a young waitress who moved with a kind of gentle efficiency that Matt appreciated. Peter muttered a “thanks” as she set his plate down, and for a moment, the air between them became less burdened, both of them focused on eating.
Peter, however, didn’t stay quiet for long. “This place is nice,” he said between bites, his tone lighter than it had been all day. “Quieter than I thought it’d be.”
Matt nodded, a small smile playing on his lips. “I like it too. Feels different here. Less… busy.”
Peter hummed in agreement, and they fell back into a comfortable silence. Matt didn’t pry; he knew when he wasn’t going to get answers. But as Peter excused himself, saying he really needed to get home, he couldn’t ignore the awful, twisting unease that leveled in his gut.
—
Back at the office, his unease hadn’t lessened.
He couldn’t just sit and focus on his usual cases. He couldn’t get his mind off the skipping heartbeat during the conversation with Peter, because he didn’t understand how Peter could have killed anyone.
It took another three minutes of sitting silently before he shoved his chair away from his desk and made his way over to the archived case files.
May Parker.
Peter’s Aunt May.
By the time he pulled out May Parker’s case file, he was completely sure he was going insane. There was a record of May Parker. There was also a record of someone else being involved – but their name had been completely scrubbed from the records. Wiped from all their files.
This wasn’t an oversight. It was deliberate.
Maybe the scrubbed name was Peter; maybe that’s how he’d been involved. Maybe he killed someone. Maybe he was involved in whatever freak accident had killed May. Maybe there were problems at home or something had gone wrong without meaning to.
Maybe he was extrapolating on the barest scraps of evidence he’s got.
“Hey, Matt, did the filing cabinet explode, or-?” Foggy stopped dead in the doorway, taking in the scene with wide eyes. “Oh. it’s you. What are you doing, man.”
Matt didn’t look up. His fingers traced the edges of a particularly thin case file. “I think Peter Parker killed someone.”
Foggy’s brain seemed to short-circuit.
“…What?”
Matt gestured vaguely at the chaos around him. “There’s a record of May Parker, and someone else was involved in her case – a second party. But their name has been scrubbed from every single file. The braille is just – not there. Like, it’s been removed. How is that even possible? Not just their name, but entire sentences. Whole chunks of paragraphs. That’s not possible. How do you un-braille paper?” It was like scrubbing the ink from a picture book. He bit down on his lip, tilting his head up to gaze in Foggy’s direction. “What if Peter was involved? What if he killed someone? Oh, and based on what happened today, he might be a kleptomaniac.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, stop. ” Foggy stepped over a pile of case notes, putting his hands up like he was talking someone down from a ledge. “You’re jumping to conclusions here, man.”
“I’m not,” Matt insisted, his voice low. “We were talking about forgiveness earlier when we went to church–”
“Why did you take Peter to church?”
“–and Peter asked if you could be forgiven for killing someone. I said yes. Then I asked – as a joke, mind you – if he’d ever killed someone.”
“And?”
“And he fucking lied , Foggy. His heartbeat skipped.”
Foggy pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Pause. Take a breath. Why do you think he lied? He could’ve been nervous, or maybe he thought you were being serious-”
“It wasn’t just nervousness!” Matt snapped, standing abruptly. “It’s his heartbeat! It skipped, it’s-”
“Or,” Foggy countered. “it’s seasonal allergies. Come on man, you know how stuffed up all your senses get this time of year.”
Matt gave him a blank, unamused look. “I took Claritin this morning.”
“Maybe it didn’t kick in?” He tried, shrugging his shoulders. “What’s more likely? That the kid who fixes our printer and brings us crappy coffee is a killer … or that your weird heartbeat thing is bullshitting you today?”
“My weird heartbeat thing does not just randomly bullshit me, Foggy,” Matt said through gritted teeth.
“Here.” Karen’s voice cut through the argument as she walked in, stepping over papers easily before she placed a pack of travel tissues in his hand “You can use these to figure out if the seventeen-year-old nerd murdered someone or not.”
The tissues were immediately tossed back at her face.
“Great aim for a blind guy,” she laughed.
“That’s what she said,” Foggy muttered. Matt wanted to throw something at him.
“You are literally a middle schooler,” he retorted, shoving the folder he was holding into Foggy’s chest as he stormed past.
Karen crouched down and started scooping up the mess. “For what it’s worth, I think Peter’s fine,” she said loudly as he slipped out of the room, gathering a handful of papers. “He’s a little awkward, sure, but he’s sweet. He’s been nothing but polite since day one.”
Foggy made a noise of agreement that had Matt biting his lip. “Yeah, Matt. Maybe not everything is a conspiracy. Maybe he’s just… an exception to your weird heartbeat rule.”
Matt paused. He did have a slightly faster heartbeat than most normal people. Not enough to be worrying, but enough that it almost made him sound sick, or like he had some underlying medical condition. Maybe he had an undiagnosed case of tachycardia or something, but that still didn’t explain the skipping every time he lied.
Matt stood in the doorway, gripping his cane so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Maybe,” he said quietly. But he didn’t believe it. Not for a second.
Peter Parker was far more than just a kid who delivered bad coffee.