Comfort
The Spidermen weren’t the most powerful nor the most experienced superheroes, but they had learned a lot from their years spent on the streets of New York City. One very important thing that they had learned was that security cameras were everywhere. A well-aimed shot from Peter-Two’s organic webbing at the security cameras on either end of the hall let them sneak into the bathrooms unseen as confused, sleepy students poured down the hall and out of the dorm building.
The shower was the fastest one they’ve both ever had. Given the scale of the noise outside, the Peters knew they only had a few minutes in the communal bathroom to themselves before the fire department arrived. They showered as fast as their enhanced speed could let them, dressed themselves quickly, then worked as a team to bathe Peter-One -one of them held the confused baby under the stream of warm water while the other quickly scrubbed the grime and food out of the child’s hair and face.
The baby fussed and complained the entire time, but thankfully, the sound of the wailing fire alarm drowned out his crying. He quieted once they dried him, slapped another diaper on him, wrapped him up in enough fluffy towels to make him look like an egg and gave him the dog plush and his pacifier as a consolation prize. Swiftly, the older Peters carried him out the window and onto the rooftop to avoid the firefighters roaming the halls.
“Oh yeah, I definitely don’t like this idea,” Peter-Two grumbled, his dark, wet hair plastered against his forehead and his breath hovering in front of him in the cold night air. He laid on his side with his back to the edge of the roof, holding Peter-One tightly against his chest and hoping the towels would be enough to protect the wet child from the cold.
“It worked though, didn’t it?” Peter-Three replied in a smug whisper as he laid parallel to the other man. The taller man carefully elbow-crawled over to the edge of the roof and cautiously peered over it.
The whole scene was illuminated by the eerie, flashing lights of fire trucks that had parked along the edge of the street. Confused and impatient students milled about on the grass while annoyed RAs ran back and forth between them, checking on their charges or talking to campus police. Many students were still fully-dressed -probably late-night studiers or partiers- but others were wearing pajamas and dragging blankets around their frames, clearly having been jolted awake by the noise. Meanwhile, the Spidermen’s superhuman hearing picked up on the heavy footsteps of firefighters going door-to-door underneath them, checking each dorm room to make sure there weren’t still students inside who had slept right through the fire alarm.
Peter-Three grinned at the sheer chaos of the scene. “Man, the nostalgia .”
“What nostalgia?” Peter-Two eyed him skeptically. “Pulling the fire alarm? What were you up to in college?”
“No no, not that, it’s just that I didn’t have this much fun in college.”
Peter-Two fell silent, his pale eyes an open book of unspoken questions.
“Balancing being Spiderman and a normal kid is hard, you know?” Peter-Three continued, his eyes distant and fond as he studied the students, “I didn’t have free time for shenanigans like this. I didn’t have friends, missed Gwen terribly, spent my nights out fighting crime and spent my days at odd-end jobs and trying to catch up with homework.” He gave Peter-Two a genuine smile that lit up his face. “This is fun.”
This . Being in a safe, academic space with his newly-founded brothers, getting into chaotic, somewhat-avoidable trouble where no one was dead or dying.
‘Fun’ was not the same word Peter-Two would have chosen, but his face softened at the other’s enthusiasm. Peter-Three had a point. Both of them were so caught up in trying to survive their dangerous, lonely lives that they’ve forgotten what it was like to just… function without a life-and-death situation hanging over their heads.
When the three Spidermen went on nightly patrols together, it often was genuinely fun. They spent their extra time learning about each other, coming up with better ways to function as a team and… well, being brothers, despite spending their entire lives apart. Peter-Three found the emotional support he had been craving for years, Peter-Two learned to laugh again and Peter-One -as the youngest and most hyper out of the bunch- had a knack for pulling them into some absolutely bonkers adventures.
This definitely counted as one of those bonkers adventures.
Peter-Two looked down at the baby in his arms. Peter-One seemed to sense that ‘being quiet’ was the plan. He was snuggled deep into the towels against Peter-Two’s chest, his arms clinging tightly to his dog plush. Sensing that he was being studied, he looked up at the older man with those big, giant brown eyes as if to say ‘what?’.
Peter-Two gently brushed some curly hair out of the child’s forehead. “Kid has a gift for giving people second chances,” he agreed quietly.
By the time the firefighters had left and the two Peters had crawled back into Peter-One’s dorm, it was well past 1 AM. Peter-Two carefully - very carefully- slid back through the dorm room window with towel-wrapped cargo held tightly against his chest. Peter-One had nodded off into sleep while they waited on the rooftop and both older Peters loathed to disturb him.
“I got this,” Peter-Three mouthed at his elder as he slid in through the window behind him. As quickly and silently as he could, the tall man quickly cleared the bed and arranged the sheets into a rough oval, piling the pillows on either side of the blanket so the baby couldn’t just roll off. (It was only a twin-sized bed, after all, since schools didn’t want to give college students anything bigger.)
Peter-Two was unable to keep a small smile off his face as he watched. “You used to do that to your bed, too, huh?” he whispered.
“Best way to sleep for sure.” Peter-Three beamed, pleased that they at least shared that in common from their childhoods.
Carefully, Peter-Two placed the baby in the middle of the oval, tucking the blankets carefully around the child’s small frame. The dog plush had slipped from the boy’s fingertips, so the older man gently wriggled it back into the crook of the baby’s arms. (He didn’t notice Peter-Three watching him with a faint but sad smile.)
The two older Peters had to figure out -through low whispers and hand-gestures- where they were going to sleep in a cramped, small dorm room. Instead of large webs (which would take up far too much room in the already-cramped space), they settled on webbing hammocks hanging from the ceiling.
“Hey, it’s like camping but inside,” Peter-Three grumbled as he climbed into his self-made hammock. He melted his lanky form into it with a long, tired sigh. “We’ve had him for like four hours and I’m already exhausted.”
“We just have to survive another day like this,” Peter-Two said placatingly, in his uniquely encouraging sort of way. Crawling into his own hammock with the grace of someone who had clearly done this quite often, he lazily flicked his wrist and turned off the light with a well-aimed web shot to the light switch. His pale blue eyes glinted in the low light as their enhanced vision adjusted to the darkness. “We’re going to have a lot to tell the kid when all of this is over.” He paused. “Do we even want to tell him?”
“Is that even a question?” Peter-Three replied with a snort. “The Big Brother Code says we have to tell him every disgusting detail and then never let him live it down.”
“Fair,” Peter-Two agreed, grinning in the darkness.
A few long, quiet moments passed with companionable silence between them. Peter-Two had almost drifted off to sleep when Peter-Three’s voice came up again, this time quieter and drowsier than before. “Can I ask a personal question?”
The older man turned his head to look at the other Peter, who was barely visible in his hammock except for one long leg hanging lazily out of it. He appreciated that Peter-Three -unlike Peter-One, who had a tendency to blurt out awkward questions and equally awkward answers- always asked for consent first. “Sure.”
“When you and MJ… tried having kids,” Peter-Three asked hesitantly, “did you guys plan anything beyond that? Like, I dunno, did you pick names or something?”
Peter-Two went so quiet for such a long time that the taller man sat up in his hammock, nerves on edge and ready to apologize. “S-Sorry dude, maybe that’s too personal-”
“No no, it’s fine,” Peter-Two finally answered, straightening his legs neatly in his hammock. He folded his hands on his stomach and stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought and memory. “We had a few ideas. If we had a boy, we’d probably use Benjamin or Harry. For a girl, we thought maybe May, but that works well as a middle name, too. MJ liked Anna. Her grandmother’s name was Anna.” His tone was wistful by the time he was done making names, as he was relishing some fun past conversations.
Peter-Three nodded. “Good names,” he said quietly.
“Very good names,” Peter-Two murmured.
Peter-Three twiddled with his thumbs, unsure what else to say. “Thanks for telling me,” he said, awkwardly and shyly. These types of conversations were new for him. He was so busy being Spiderman or trying to survive as a single adult in New York City that he didn’t have deep, long-term friends to have these types of conversations with. It felt… nice, mature, and overwhelmingly normal all at the same time.
Peter-Two’s pale, silvery eyes turned toward him. “Why wouldn’t I tell you?” he said, his tone light and calm.
There was a lot implied in those words, but Peter-Three knew the most important message was ‘I trust you’. It made him feel warm inside. Peter-Two had a way of making both him and Peter-One feel important without saying much of anything.
“We should sleep,” the older Peter sighed after a few seconds of silence. “First bus is at 8:00 AM.”
Peter-Three startled awake so fast that it actually left him dizzy and feeling nauseous. He sat up and swung his legs over his hammock, one hand flying up to his heart where he could feeling it racing in his chest. It hurts, why does it hurt so much? It took him a few seconds to realize those weren’t his emotions.
“You, too, huh?” Peter-Two whispered. He had already crawled out of his hammock and hung upside down from the ceiling, gracefully hanging there from the balls of his feet and his fingertips. He studied Peter-Three carefully with pale, large eyes that glinted in the soft light coming in from the window; not for the first time, Peter-Three thought the other looked like a terrifying, ethereal creature, like some mystical owl.
Peter-Three’s own sharp eyes scanned the room for danger and settled on the baby below them. He wasn’t crying -he wasn’t even awake, it seemed- but he was visibly moving under his little pile of blankets, kicking his little legs and grabbing at the blankets with his tiny hands. Peter-Three’s hand clenched a little harder around his heart. Pain. Grief. Anguish. “This… This feels like…”
“-the day we met him.” Peter-Two finished quietly.
All three Peters could sense each other if they were in the same universe; most of the time, they quietly existed at the edges of each other’s consciousness. Each of them felt like a similar but still unique vibrating chord in the constant, soft hum that was their spider-sense. Peter-One felt faster, softer and lighter than the other two, like the frantic flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Peter-Two was slower and smoother, like the coming and going of lazy waves on a tide. Peter-Three ebbed and flowed to an imperfect rhythm, like a dancing breeze right before a storm.
Sometimes, however, they could pick up more than just the others’ presences. The night they all met, Peter-One had been broadcasting pain and grief so strongly that the two older Peters felt it without even knowing who he was, where he was, or why they were there. They had simply wandered around this not-theirs version of New York City in confusion until Ned and Michelle-Jones found them. In retrospect, none of them knew what it felt like to ‘feel’ other Spidermen, especially not ones in emotional turmoil.
Peter-Two dropped silently to the ground and Peter-Three followed. They stood awkwardly at the edge of the bed, watching the thrashing baby.
“Nightmare?” Peter-Three whispered, even though he felt like he was stating the obvious.
“I think he must remember, somehow,” Peter-Two added, sadly. “There’s so much about his life that is nightmare-worthy.” The older man knelt by the bed and rested his hands on the squirming baby, setting one soothingly on the boy’s chest and very-so-carefully running his fingers through the baby’s hair in slow, repetitive movements.
Peter-Three sat next to him, folding his arms on the bed and resting his sleepy head on them as he watched. “My May used to do that,” he observed with a nostalgic smile.
Peter-Two’s voice was quiet and heavy with sorrow. “Yeah. Mine, too.”
Peter-One woke up slowly, perhaps comforted by the weight of the hair stroking or the low, careful voices nearby. His huge eyes blinked open groggily and fixed on his two brothers, who immediately leaned over him with worry and concern.
“Hey, little buddy,” Peter-Three gave him a comforting few pats on the infant’s legs. “We’re here.”
“You’re okay, you’re safe.” Peter-Two told him, still running his hands through the child’s hair.
Peter-One’s large brown eyes welled up with tears and he made some small whimpers around his pacifier, although he was remarkably quiet for a child who had been screaming only hours earlier. Peter-Two found the silence unnatural and somehow more heart-breaking. He is in there, somehow, even if he can’t talk.
Peter-Three looked around and found the dog plush that had either fallen off the bed or was thrown off during all the thrashing. He held the toy back up to the child. “Heeey, lookie here, doggo’s back.”
Peter-One reached out, took the doll but -to the surprise of both adults- discarded it immediately. Instead, his chubby fingers curled around Peter-Three’s wrist instead.
They all understood that silent message. Stay.
Peter-Three cringed but he allowed his hand to be held. “Oh kiddo,” he whispered softly, “We’re not going to fit on here.”
“We can try,” Peter-Two reasoned, with a surprisingly pleasant tone considering they had been rudely awakened in the middle of the night. He shifted upward so that his torso was lying vertical across the narrow bed with his legs hanging off the side. It looked absurd and rather uncomfortable, especially with the baby and the blankets pushing him to the very last foot of space on the bed.
“...Your back is going to hurt a lot tomorrow, you know that, right?” Peter-Three told him skeptically.
“It definitely will,” Peter-Two agreed, returning to his hand to where he was gingerly stroking Peter-One’s hair, “but May and Ben did this for me for weeks when I first arrived at their house. I guess I must have had nightmares about Mom and Dad.”
Peter-Three simply stared at him, startled at the mention of their long-absent parents. Something dark flashed across his face and he looked away.
Peter-Two immediately knew he stepped on a button that made the other uncomfortable. “I don’t remember my parents, not anymore,” he added, his voice uncertain and a little apologetic. “Do you… remember yours?”
Peter-Three was quiet for a long time, but his silence felt tense and angry. Then, after a long moment, he let out a long, shaky breath he didn’t know he was holding. “They don’t matter anymore,” he said finally, stubbornly. “May and Ben are my parents.”
Peter-Two’s gray eyes were filled with his particular brand of soft, gentle sympathy. “Of course,” he agreed gently. “I get that.”
Without another word about such a heavy topic, Peter-Three climbed on to the opposite end of bed and curled his tall frame around the baby and the circular mass of blankets. It was an uncomfortable fit for someone so tall, but he managed. Both men quietly both claimed a pillow for themselves and rested a hand on Peter-One’s body -Peter-Two kept his on the boy’s head and Peter-Three let the baby wrap his arms and legs around his hand like a little koala. He soothingly patted the child’s chest, hoping that the rhythmic motion would help him sleep.
Already, the child looked much more relaxed. It didn’t take him long to fall back to sleep, sandwiched between the warm blankets and the soothing presence of his two older brothers.
Peter-Three drifted off next, although a faint furrow remained on his brows from their earlier, uncomfortable discussion.
When he was sure the taller man’s breathing had evened out and that he was truly sleep, Peter-Two quietly reached over and rested his free hand on the other’s messy hair. He patted the other’s head absently before he, too, closed his eyes and also drifted off to sleep.