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When Tony got the call from May at nine o’clock at night, he instantly knew that something was wrong.
In the past year or so since the Vulture incident – aka the biggest fuck up of his life – and her finding out about Peter being Spider-Man, the two of them had come to a sort-of agreement. The agreement was that his actions towards Peter before she had found out were reprehensible, irresponsible, and completely reckless. But, since he had already basically become the kid’s mentor despite his own screwing the pooch in trying to make it otherwise, it was his responsibility to step up to the plate. Ergo, they’d given Peter a shit ton of more rules to his being a vigilante, made his internship legit, and let the kid stay at the Compound at least three weekends a month. Tony was also forced into texting with May on the regular, although he didn’t so much mind this.He knew that May wasn’t his greatest fan, even so long after the fact. But if there was one thing they could be united in, it was Peter. So their texting occurred weekly, if not more, and ranged in conversation from the most mundane things to memes he was unashamed to admit they sent each other regarding Spider-Man. It was a way to get the edge off of how they were letting a now-sixteen-year-old kid they both cared deeply about on the loose in what was the equivalent of multimillion-dollar pajamas.But despite a year, or fifty-one weeks to be precise, passing, he and May had never really evolved into calling each other on a regular basis. Sure, they did it when it was necessary, but only when it was necessary. Which basically amounted to a total of three times: twice when Peter had been shot, and once when he’d gotten the flu despite supposedly unable to be sick (it had turned out to be a super strain of the flu, just for the record. The kid was still impervious to almost all other strains as well as the common cold.)And so, when he saw the picture he’d taken of her from Peter’s sixteenth birthday for her icon on his phone light up its screen, even though his phone was about a foot away from his face and only in the corner of his eye, Tony stopped everything that he was doing. Literally everything, allowing the tool he’d been holding to fall out of his right hand and onto the floor as he grabbed his phone, pressed the green “accept” button, and put it to his ear. His feet carried him out the door to his personal lab – although where he was going, he wasn’t quite sure. He needed to speak with May first.“May?”“Tony?” the woman returned. He heard her inhale her breath sharply. “Oh, Tony, thank God.”“What’s going on?” he asked her, prodding. He needed an idea of how bad this was, albeit from the tone of her voice, he was already heading off to his other personal lab, the one dedicated to Iron Man and Spider-Man and not just SI and miscellaneous projects, to collect his suit. “Is the kid okay? Is he hurt?”“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “I – I mean, he says he isn’t hurt, but he won’t come out of his room or let me in it, and he’s asking for you, and I don’t – ”“May,” he cut over her. “Breathe.”He heard her do just that.“Tell me what started it. Was he like this just when you came home?”“He said he wasn’t feeling good this morning,” she told him. Alarm bells went off in his mind. Peter never said he wasn’t feeling good, not even when Tony had had to come pick him up from school because of a sensory overload. The super strain of the flu had been the only exception to the rule, and they all knew how that had went. “I thought it was just a sensory overload, so I let him stay home. But then I came back from work and his door was locked and he wouldn’t come out of his room and – and – ”“And what?”There was a pause.One agonizing minute later, just as FRIDAY transferred the call from his phone to his suit, May came back on the line. “He said he wants you,” she told him quietly. “He won’t open the door until you get here.”“Tell him I’m coming.”She hung up after that.The flight to Queens was agonizing. Going in the suit took way less time than it would’ve to go by car, but it still felt like it took too long. Something was wrong with Peter. May had no idea what. He had no idea what. The only things he could think of were up to his imagination, and that was a very dark place to go to.A part of him knew he should’ve cared about someone wondering what an Iron Man suit was doing on top of one particular apartment building in Forest Hills, Queens, because if anybody realized he was connected to the Parkers outside of the internship on paper that would be...Not Fun™, but he didn’t. When he finally landed, he about tumbled in his haste to get out of the suit, heading for the service door. He tore it open since of course the Parkers had to live in a building where it was never locked, running down the stairs two at a time. At least this way there were less flights for him to do this with, seeing as how May and Peter lived on the fifth floor of seven total.May was waiting for him. She opened the door at the first knock, her eyes red-rimmed behind her glasses. “He’s – ” she started, jerking her head towards the small hallway that led to Peter’s room. She didn’t say anything more, not that she’d needed to say anything in the first place.Tony went straight over to the door to Peter’s room. He knocked at the door once, and heard the intake of breath from inside. It sounded pained, labored. No wonder May had called him, besides the obvious of how Peter never acted like this, would always open the door just to prove to her he wasn’t hurt or harmed.“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “What’s going on?”He heard a sniffle from inside. It was clear the kid had been crying. “Mr. – Mr. Stark?”“Yep, it’s me,” he replied, popping the “p.” “I came over, just like you wanted me to. So, can you open the door?”Peter did no such thing.Tony frowned, turning around to look back at May. She looked just as baffled as him. “Kid?”“I’m sorry!” Peter cried. “I want to open the door! It’s just – ”“Just what?”He heard the slow, reluctant, and careful shuffling of feet. Peter didn’t unlock the door, much less open it, but it was progress. “It’s hard for me to – ” Peter winced, stifling a sob. “It still hurts.”May held her hand over her mouth.Tony fought to keep his cool. Right now, only one of them could afford to be a complete and utter mess. He could wait until later, when he was back in the Compound and Peter wouldn’t be around to see it. “So, you are hurt?”Peter picked up on the inflection of his voice. “Not like that! Nobody hurt me. Well, I – I mean...” He sighed. A soft thunk against the door was heard, presumably from his forehead. “I don’t think I can explain it. I didn’t even realize what was going on until this morning when I – ”“When you what?”A year ago, he wouldn’t have known that was what Peter needed him to do: lead him on his own train of thought with questions. It was a thing you did with a kid, which Peter was, but he’d never been good with kids, there being only one other exception besides the one he was currently trying to help. But, he’d learned. Read some books May had personally vouched for, as the parent of the teenager in question in all but name. Listened to podcasts. Went through trial and error, trying to find out with Peter what worked with them and what didn’t. The whole shebang.He was thankful for that right now, because this experience was baffling, terrifying, horrifying. He had no idea what he would’ve done a year ago with the current situation. Whatever it was, it probably would’ve earned him another slap to the face from May.Peter sniffled again. “You can’t be mad,” he pleaded with them. “I mean, you can be later, but you can’t be mad right now, please. ‘Cause if you get mad, I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, and I don’t wanna do that.”He was afraid he’d hurt them?A second look back at May.She was the deciding factor between the two of them. “Okay, Peter,” she said, her voice cracking part of the way through. “But whatever it is, we’re not gonna be mad at you. We’re gonna help you. We’ll get through this.”“Together,” Tony added.“Y – you say that now,” Peter warned. “Just...give me a second.”The door was unlocked. True to form, they didn’t immediately barge in. Peter shuffled in his room and did whatever it was he needed to do. Finally, after maybe ten seconds at the most which felt like an eternity, he told them in a voice so small Tony had to strain his ears to listen, “You can come in.”It took pretty much everything in his and May’s power to not barge through the door.The first thing they were struck by was in the olfactory sense. There was a scent in the room that was heady and earthy, like the room had been converted at the last minute to an animal den. Next to him, May’s eyebrows furrowed, like the smell was familiar to her but she didn’t know how to place it.Everything else was visual. Peter had a bunkbed in his room for him and Ned, so that his friend would have a place to sleep when he stayed over (and also because the kid was partial to heights now due to his freaky spider powers, but that was neither here nor there). Except the bottom bunk that was usually reserved for Ned had been hidden off from view by a large, thick comforter, pinned that way by his mattress. There was also a blanket covering his window, which was...odd. Peter, he knew, came in and out of the apartment as Spider-Man using that window.But nothing about this situation was ordinary.Peter himself was sitting on the bottom bunk, having pushed a little bit of the comforter aside. He looked awful. His face was pale and yet flushed at the same time, his forehead covered in a thin sheen of sweat which had also made his hair damp. Deep bags were underneath his eyes.But the most frightening thing was how a trail of blood and...gunk, for lack of a better word, led the way to his bed. Tony had never seen anything like it before.May moaned lowly as she tried to rush forwards. “Peter – ”A dark look settled in Peter’s eyes, and it was horrifying, before it was gone just as soon as it had come. The kid shook his head wildly. “Don’t come any closer, May! Not yet!”Tony grabbed the woman by the arm. She whirled around at him, furious, but he conveyed to her their need for doing as the kid asked. That look in his eyes had been enough to establish that as fact.When May’s shoulders slumped, he focused his attention back on the kid. “What’s going on, Roo?” He hoped the nickname would calm Peter down some. “If we can’t come closer yet, you gotta give us a picture. Why are you bleeding?”Peter’s eyes darted from him to behind the comforter. He worried his bottom lip slightly. “Do you remember when you had Harley come up and visit this past summer?”Harley? What did the kid who was the only other exception to him not being good with kids have to do with this? The kid who he had done literally everything for once he’d discovered that he had stage IV bone cancer with an outlook that was not so good, including injecting him with a modified Extremis serum and building with him a robotic leg for his prosthesis?“You know I do,” he replied. He had to force the tenor of his voice to remain unwavering. “You two seemed to get pretty close.”For some reason, this made Peter laugh. “Yeah,” he said, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Yeah, we got close. A lot closer than you think.”Tony felt May still next to him. “No...” she breathed. “Peter, please don’t tell me...”Peter ignored her. “Don’t blame him, Mr. Stark,” he begged him, those brown eyes wide and pleading. The feeling of him being in the den of a wild animal increased. Peter’s eyes almost looked like a deer’s. “He didn’t know this was going to happen. I didn’t know this was going to happen! I mean, I’m a guy, right? A cisgender guy. I couldn’t have ever thought this would be possible, and there weren’t really any signs of it, and – ”A sinking feeling fell into Tony’s stomach. He nearly stumbled back as the pieces began to come together in his mind, like May. He felt like he was going to be sick. “Kid.”“Don’t blame Harley, okay?” Peter repeated. Back and forth his eyes went for one more time. He shuddered in a deep breath. “Okay, I think you can come over now. Just...be slow about it.”Translation: no sudden movements.He and May could do that. Probably.As they cautiously walked towards the bed, Peter scooted himself further into the nest he had made, because that was what it was, Tony realized now. He tried to prepare himself for what that meant.But nothing could’ve prepared him for what he was about to see.Because when Peter pulled the comforter further open so he and May could get a better look, Tony saw that he was now curled around a mess of old pillowcases and clothes, one of which he recognized as a hoodie he had bought Harley. The blood and gunk was even worse in the swaddle, but it did not hide the two sacs nestled there. They almost looked like flesh-colored water balloons, although their...shells had obviously hardened some since they had first come out. Bluish veins skittered along their surface. They were about the size of pineapples, though it was clear that much of this had to currently be water weight. Harley’s visit had been four and a half months ago. Plus, it would explain how they had gone undetected for so long, outside of Peter looking bloated from time to time. The babies would probably grow as much as the eggs would allow until they...hatched.
Hatched.
Tony had seen a lot of weird shit in his time. But this...this was up there. It was not the weirdest thing in the world, but, come on. Oviposition. Human arachnids with intersex characteristics. Who would have thought?But, even with the weirdness, a part of him was thankful that they were eggs. Otherwise, the timing of them being...laid and the lack of noise in the room besides Peter could not have meant anything good. And while he didn’t want either of his kids to be parents so soon, because they were kids, they were only sixteen, the idea of Peter having a miscarriage or a stillbirth was heartbreaking. He had already been through so much in his short life. He didn’t deserve that.“Are...are you mad?” Peter asked nervously. His eyes were already half-lidded. He looked like he could fall asleep at any moment. Tony wouldn’t be surprised. The day had obviously been stressful and...laborious for him.May laughed brokenly. “No, sweetie. I’m not mad,” she assured him. She was sad, and of course heartbroken, but not angry. She hesitantly reached out a hand. “Can I?”Peter looked reluctant to let her, but he nodded.His aunt made a noise between a sob and an exclamation of surprise when she touched the surface of one of the eggs. “Oh, it’s so beautiful,” she whispered. “Tony...”He waited for the kid’s permission. When Peter nodded again, Tony followed May’s actions, just with the other egg. The feeling of it was...hard to describe. It was damp, still covered in some sort of goo. The surface of it was hard, but not too hard. It obviously had to dry out some more.He wasn’t much better than May, as he nearly cried as well. Call it the pheromones in the air, or maybe just the fact he was going soft, but this, to him, felt like a real miracle of childbirth. It felt akin to a grandfather holding his grandchild in his arms for the first time.But it also made him wonder. “Why didn’t you call one of us when it first happened?”Did he...not trust them?“I was scared,” Peter admitted. He winced then, his entire body tensing. “Sorry, cramp. But I was scared of what you guys would do when you found out...what I would do. These instincts, they’re messing with my head. I haven’t been able to leave the room all day.”May, being the nurse that she was, instantly reacted. “So you haven’t eaten since last night? Honey, that’s not okay. You just gave birth. You need something to eat to keep your blood sugar up.”“I know.” Peter sniffed, then looked at Tony specifically. “Delmar’s is still open until midnight. Could you get me – ?”“A number five with extra pickles, smushed down real flat,” he recited from memory. “I’ll make it a double.”“And I’ll get you some water,” May added. “You’re definitely dehydrated, Peter.”“Okay,” he agreed. His eyes blinked out of sync. “I love you.”He didn’t need to specify who he was saying it to. Tony knew he meant both of them.“Love you too, kid,” he said, his throat tightening.May gave a watery smile. “Love you always.”They left the room, though neither of them wanted to. May was the one to shut the door behind them, as gently as possible.They didn’t speak until they reached the kitchen. There, May fell apart, her shoulders shaking as she tried to fill up a glass of water and failed. “Tony.”He was at her side at once, taking the glass from her before she dropped it into the sink and potentially broke it. “Hey, it’s alright,” he soothed her. “Everything’s going to be fine. Like you told him, we’re going to get through this.”“I just never thought it was going to be him that was pregnant in this kind of scenario, much less that it would happen like this!” she wept. But just as soon as he was about to comfort her again, she took in a breath and steadied herself. She was a nurse, after all; she knew when she needed to push her feelings aside for a patient, even if that patient was her own nephew. “But you’re right, and you need to go get him his food.”“I’ll stay when I get back for the night,” he offered. “We can talk more about this once he’s fed.”“Yes.” Her lips thinned. “We’re going to need to talk about getting him checked out with Helen, and how to explain the news to Harley and his parents.”“Mother,” he corrected her. God, this was going to be a mess. May and Evelyn Keener had one thing in common besides their being single parents, and that was they could both be terrifying women. He had no idea how he was going to explain to her that her son had had unprotected sex with Peter on his watch this past summer and he hadn’t realized it, that Peter was Spider-Man and his body had been restructured by the radioactive spider more than they’d thought and he’d laid eggs, and now her son was going to be a father and she a grandmother at the grand age of thirty-four.Or rather, he had no idea how he was going to explain it to her without being on the receiving end of something far worse than a slap. This was going to be a nightmare.But, he could worry about that later. Currently, he needed to get the spider baby who had just had his own babies fed so he could sleep with a full stomach, and then be here with him and May as support for as long as they needed.
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Harley was confused.
It had all started that morning. He’d woken up at seven o’clock despite it being the weekend, because no, he wasn’t a psychopath, he was just an insomniac, thank you very much. He’d spent about twenty or so minutes scrolling on his phone in his bed, just trying to wake up, then had taken a shower. It was while he’d been toweling off his hair and searching for clothes to wear for the day that his mother had knocked at his door. “Harley?” she’d asked. “Are you awake?”Considering how little sleep he usually got, that answer was almost always a “yes.” But, he appreciated her respect for his privacy. “Yeah, Mom. Why?”“Tony just called me,” she’d told him. “He’s going to be here in about an hour.”That had given him pause. While the mechanic was often neurotic, he wasn’t one to show up to Rose Hill, Tennessee with literally only an hour’s notice. “An hour?”“Yes.”“Did he say why?”“He just said it’s important,” was all he had gotten in response. “And that he’ll probably be takin you back with him, so pack for at least a week.”“At least a week?”He’d opened his door then, so he’d been able to look his mom in the face. At sixteen, he was taller than her now, the top of her head reaching his chin. It still felt kind of weird. “Mom, what’s going on?”His mom had looked tired, but just as confused as he’d been – and still was. “I don’t know, Harley. But whatever it is, it’s obviously important, so I’ll call you out of school on Monday. Just get packing.”His eight-year-old sister, Abigail (yes, he’d lied about her age to Tony when he’d first met him to make himself seem more mature than he’d been, don’t call him out on that), had sat on his bed as he’d put stuff in his duffel bag. “Why is Mr. Stark taking you out of school for a week?”“I don’t know,” he’d replied. “And it’s Dr. Stark, he has a doctorate.” There was only one person he knew who was able to call Tony “Mr. Stark” on a regular basis, and he...it hadn’t been sad thinking about him, or even awkward, because they’d still talked with each other on a pretty regular basis after he’d left that summer, but it’d been different talking to him by text or the occasional FaceTime than seeing him in-person. It’d made it easier to let him slip from his mind.But, even then, he’d known that was about to change very soon. Even without the mention of him, Harley going to New York for whatever reason made that a foregone conclusion. He lived in New York, after all. The city, not upstate where the Compound was, but same difference.“But he said it’s important?”“That’s what Mom said.”Abigail had sighed. He’d known she’d wanted to come with him, because she’d never been allowed to before. But it was also because of that reason why he’d known she wouldn’t be allowed to this time, either.He’d momentarily paused his packing. “Hey,” he’d said, and had sat next to her and booped her on the nose, much to her irritation. “I’ll get you another souvenir, okay? And maybe in a couple years, you’ll get to come with me.”“Okay...”“Okay.” He’d held out his fist to her. “Best sister ever?”She’d bumped his fist with her own. “Best brother ever.”Tony had arrived at just over an hour in one of those fancy cars he had stored at his Tennessee garage, and of course rarely ever used. He’d rung the doorbell and Harley’s mom had answered it. “Tony,” she’d greeted him. “Hello.”“Hey, Evelyn.” And Harley hadn’t needed to see Tony’s face at that second to have known he was exhausted. He’d sounded like it, well and thoroughly exhausted, and he’d looked like it as well. There’d been – again, still were – deep bags underneath his eyes, like he hadn’t slept for days and had been subsisting only on coffee and junk food. “Sorry about this all being last minute.”“That’s okay.” She’d stepped aside. “As long as you’re planning on telling me what this is all about.”“Yes, of course.” Tony’s eyes had instinctively roamed across their humble abode. This, naturally, had meant he’d had to look at Harley, because he’d been sitting on the couch right next to Abigail, while the TV had played Phineas and Ferb on Disney XD.Harley had never seen so many emotions flash across the mechanic’s face before. He’d looked like he’d seen a ghost, then seen it resurrected, only to then see the former ghost be murdered all over again. The color in his cheeks had entirely left his face. His already fast heartbeat due to him formerly having a literal unhealed hole in his chest had started to pump even faster, practically a roar in Harley’s ears.Just like that, he’d known.Whatever it was that needed him to come up to New York, it was his fault. Deep shit was to be in his future.“Hey, Harley, Miss Abigail,” Tony had said. Then, just as swiftly as he’d looked at him and his sister, he’d turned back to his mother. “Shall we talk alone in the kitchen?”His mom had been surprised. “You don’t want to talk out here, or with Harley?”Tony had winced. “This...probably isn’t the kind of news I should tell you together. Don’t worry, he’s – you’re – ” here, he’d pointed between the two of them, like he’d thought actions didn’t speak louder than words “ – not in trouble. You just need to trust me on this.”What had followed after that was one of the most baffling moments in Harley’s entire life. His mom and Tony had gone into the kitchen, and then Tony had employed one of his muffling devices that worked even against enhanced people, so he hadn’t been able to hear most of their conversation. He’d heard his mom scream, though, followed by her crying. Tony had gotten up out of his seat, as he’d carefully positioned himself to be the visible one from the archway, to comfort her.When the two had come out of the kitchen, his mom had had the same reaction as Tony, just with an added, unexpected layer of anger. It had made Harley scared as he’d stood up, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Evelyn Keener could be a terrifying woman when she wanted to be. “What did I do?”His mom had bristled, her form having been overtaken by fury. “Harley James Keener, you know exactly what you did – !” she’d shouted. It was only Tony having wordlessly placed a hand on her shoulder in the middle of her sentence that had made her calm down – or rather, it was more like she’d swung from one extreme to the other. Her face had crumpled, while the glistening of tears in her eyes had increased. “Tony’ll explain as much as he can to you on the way. You need to go.”“Mom – ”“Just go, Harley!”His mother might have been terrifying, but not even she had ever been the type to yell at her own kids. That had only confirmed to him how serious this was.“...Okay.” He’d grabbed his bag and given his mom a brief hug, although she hadn’t reciprocated. “Love you, Mom.” Then he’d pulled Abigail into a hug. “Love you, Abigail. See you in a week.”Tony had made a noise at that, but when Harley had looked over at him, he’d waved his hand towards the door. “Alright, kid. Let’s go.”In the car, Harley had metaphorically pounced on him before he’d even shifted the car out of park. “Tony, what’s going on?”The older man had grimaced. “I can’t really tell you, it’s not my place.”“What? What’s that supposed to me?”Tony had sighed and glanced at him briefly. “It’s about Peter, okay?” he’d said. “That’s all I can tell you right now.”Coldness had seeped into Harley’s bones. “Is he hurt?”“No, he’s all fine now.”“But he was hurt?”Tony had tightened his grip on the steering wheel, which had made his knuckles become white. “Don’t even try, kid. You’re not gonna pry it out of me.”...And Harley very much wanted to disagree with that statement, he just wanted to say right now. He was very adept at getting under the mechanic’s skin enough to get him to reveal what he wanted to.But, he’d also recognized this was not the kind of situation to do that with, so he’d kept his mouth shut.For the entire duration of the car ride to Tony’s private airport, the flight to the Compound, and then the drive to the city after that in complete contradiction to everything he’d expected, he’d tried to figure out what was going om himself. He’d bounced his right leg so hard he’d wound up triggering his phantom pain, the nerves that were no longer there because they’d been replaced with metal having hurt, but he hadn’t cared about that. He’d just downed a couple of extra-strength ibuprofen and gone right back to bouncing his leg.None of this made sense to him. Tony had brought him up to New York because of Peter, but continued to remain unwavering in his refusal to say what was going on with the other boy. His mom had said it was his fault, confirming his suspicions, and had been downright furious with him. But, the last time he’d either texted or FaceTimed Peter, he’d seemed fine. Not a problem in the world, outside of his being Spider-Man and the woes of teenage life in general. He didn’t think he’d said anything wrong to him.True, they hadn’t just done...talking back in July, when Harley had last come up here so Tony’s kids (the mechanic hadn’t phrased it like that, but he and Peter both knew that was how he saw them as) could meet each other and get close to one another. Harley didn’t think that Tony knew that, knew just how close they’d gotten, because they’d done a pretty good job at keeping it a secret. And it wasn’t like anything was going to have come of it anyways, not right now, when he was living hundreds of miles away in Tennessee, right?...Right?“We’re here,” Tony said, interrupting his train of thought and bringing him back to the present.Harley looked up at the apartment building the mechanic had parked in front of. This was where Peter lived. It was a pretty nice building. Not one of the nicest in Queens, and that much was obvious when they went inside and each of the two elevators were out of order, but it definitely wasn’t close to being one of the worst.Tony’s heartbeat went back to fluttering as they got closer to the fifth floor, and it wasn’t just from exertion. He stopped them in the stairwell, his expression somehow becoming even more serious. “Look, kid,” he spoke. “I need you to promise me something.”By this point, Harley’s hands were more than just a little sweaty from the apprehension. He tried to subtly wipe them off on his jeans. “Okay?”“You can’t freak out too bad, not in front of Peter,” Tony told him. “I know you’re definitely going to want to, but Pete – he’s not doing too good with other people having big emotions right now. Hopefully, that won’t be a problem for you – ” here, Tony’s eyes darted away from him “ – but just in case.”Harley had just about had enough of this. “Tony, you need to tell me what’s going on,” he retorted, his hands clenching themselves into fists and then unclenching when he realized what he was doing. “You can’t – I ain’t gonna go in there without knowin’ what I did.” His accent was bleeding through more than he usually let it as he spoke, but he didn’t care.“You already know,” Tony answered cryptically. “That’s all I can say.”“Like hell I – ”But he was cut off by Tony coming around him and placing his hand on the small of his back, pushing him forwards. “No big reactions,” he reminded him. “Believe me, you don’t want to end up like Happy.”“What – ?”The Parkers’ apartment was not located very far from the stairwell. Tony took the lead, rapping his knuckles against the doorway. Within seconds, the door was pulled open by a woman with long, dark brown hair and glasses that made her look a little bug-eyed. This was Peter’s aunt, May Parker. “Tony, thank God,” she breathed immediately upon seeing him. Her eyes flitted over to Harley. Her face went through expressions so rapidly he didn’t have time to recognize them. “And you must be Harley Keener.”“Yes, ma’am,” he said.Peter’s aunt seemed equal parts pleased and irritated at the moniker. “Call me May, please,” she responded. Then, under her breath, “You might as well.”“May,” Tony chided.She sighed as she moved aside to let them in. “I know, I’m sorry. It is nice to meet you, Harley.”He didn’t say anything in response to that. He had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate it.Just what the fuck was going on?In the living room of the apartment, Happy was sitting on the couch, nursing what was a nasty-looking black eye with an ice pack. He looked up at the sound of him walking in, and gave him a shaky smile. “Hey, kid,” he greeted him. “Tony tell you what’s going on?”“No.” Fear was creeping into his voice. He couldn’t stop it. “Oh my God, Happy, did Peter give you that?”“He didn’t mean to – but, wait, what do you mean? He didn’t tell you?” Happy’s eyes flicked over to Tony. “You seriously didn’t prep the kid?”Tony winced. “I prepped him, I just didn’t tell him everything. It’s not my place to.”“‘Not your place to?’ Tony, you can’t just do this to – ”“...Harley?”All of the occupants in the room froze, including him.Peter was peeking out from the side of his door, having opened it while the two men had been just starting to get into an argument. Harley couldn’t see a whole lot of his face, just the one half of it that was visible, but he didn’t look...good. He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days.Harley’s gut clenched. What had he done to cause this?“...Hey, Peter,” he said after a moment. “How are you – oof!”With the speed of a freight train, Peter collided with him, pulling him into a hug just a little too tight to be comfortable. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he wailed. “I didn’t mean for this to happen! I didn’t know it could happen! If I did, I would’ve – I would’ve – ”Harley’s brain went into overdrive. “Hey, it’s okay, darlin’,” he said, the nickname rolling off his tongue like this wasn’t the first time he’d ever called Peter it. “Everything’s alright. I’m not mad.”Peter sniffled. He pulled away from him enough to look at him with his wide dark brown eyes, as filled with tears as they were. “Really?”“Yes.” Whatever was going on, he couldn’t be mad at Peter for it. Tony and his mom for not telling him about it properly? Fuck, yes. But not Peter. Not when he was obviously so distraught.The confirmation made Peter relax some, his body relaxing from being so tensed. He wiped at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie – which had to be one of Tony’s, because it was two sizes too big for him. The flannel pants were definitely his, though. “Okay,” he whispered. Hope began to filter through his visage. “Do you – do you want to see them?”“‘Them?’”...And just as soon as that hope had come, it was gone. Peter looked over at Tony alarmingly. “You didn’t tell him?” he exclaimed, his voice going a full octave higher.Tony shrugged. “I thought about it, but I figured it would probably be better for you to.”“Mr. Stark!” cried Peter. His breathing began to pick up, his heartbeat racing. “You said you were going to! How am I supposed to – ? He doesn’t even know what’s – !”“Darlin’, look, it’s fine,” Harley cut in. “You can tell me, whatever it is, okay? I know you can.”That stopped Peter’s spiraling. He instinctively bit his bottom lip. “I should probably just show you. It’ll be easier.”“Uh – ” Harley wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. He wanted to have at least some semblance of an idea of what was going on before having to see it.But Peter had already grabbed his hand and was pulling him along. He brought him into his bedroom and closed the door behind them. He locked it, too, much to Harley’s confusion.Harley had seen pictures of his bedroom before, due to their texting with each other. It looked pretty much the same in real life, although there was the notable exception of a blanket obscuring the bottom bunk from view and another blanket over the window. There was also a...smell in the room, one he couldn’t place, but it was overpowering.“Sorry,” Peter apologized, noticing how his nose wrinkled. “I – I know it’s bad. It was worse. I haven’t really been able to let anyone else come in here for extended periods of time, so it’s made cleanup kind of hard.”“But I’m okay in here?”Peter grabbed his hand again, squeezing it. “Of course.” He smiled at him shyly. “You’re – it’s right for you to be here. It makes everything almost perfect.”
“Almost.”
Harley cleared his throat. “So, uh – are you gonna show me what’s going on, Peter?”Peter nodded. “Yeah, um – come here.”He led him over to the bottom bunk, although he didn’t immediately pull away the comforter keeping whatever was behind it hidden from view. “You remember that night we had, right?”“I don’t think I could ever forget it, darlin’,” Harley deadpanned.Peter let out a strangled laugh. “Yeah, me either. But...you’ve figured out this relates to that night, right?”“I think so. My mom said – ”Abruptly, just like that, he stopped. It all came to him with startling clarity. There was only one reason why his mother would’ve been so upset, since she’d become a mother at the extremely young age of eighteen, and had instilled in him the importance of protection ever since he could remember. There was only one reason why Tony would’ve made him come here last minute and decide not to tell him anything, as it would be better for Peter to do so.Because that night, he hadn’t worn protection. Why would he have? They were each other’s first time, each other’s first everything in the romantic sense outside of Peter’s fiasco with Adrian Toomes’ daughter, and they were both guys. It had never even crossed their minds that –His breath caught. The air almost tangibly left his lungs. “Peter,” he breathed.“Don’t worry,” Peter said softly. “They’re not babies, not yet. We still have...time to figure out stuff. I’m not sure how long, but...”With that being said, he tugged back the comforter, not opening up the space all the way, but enough.Harley felt like he wasn’t surprised as he should’ve been at the fact that they were eggs. Maybe it was because this entire event was throwing him on a fucking loop, maybe it was because he hadn’t heard any crying or signs of life except for a soft pitter patter of heartbeats only audible to enhanced ears, or maybe it was just because Peter was Spider-Man. He’d been bitten by a radioactive spider. Of course if it had changed his body like it had, and then given him ovaries and a uterus on top of what they’d thought, he would lay eggs. Of course.The eggs...they were in a nice setup. They were nestled in a mess of soft fabrics, including the hoodie he hadn’t realized until he’d gotten back to Tennessee that Peter had stolen from him. There was a heat lamp nearby, but not positioned to focus completely on them, so they could be warm but not too hot when Peter wasn’t around. And it seemed like he was a lot, because his phone was charging next to the nest, and a case for wireless earbuds was right next to it.He blinked. The reality of it began to crash down on him. The eggs. Peter didn’t seem to know for sure when they were going to hatch, but they were going to hatch. And then they would be babies, and he and Peter were going to be parents at sixteen years old. Sixteen. All because of what was the equivalent of a one night stand. A tale as old as time, and yet it felt different now, now that it was happening to him.“Harley,” Peter grunted, his arms wrapping around him again. And – oh, he knew why. It was because his knees had buckled, and he’d been about to collapse to the floor. “C’mon – okay, let’s just sit on the floor, me and you. Just the two of us.”So they did, right in front of the bed. “You laid eggs,” Harley found himself saying, but it felt like it wasn’t actually him saying it. “We’re going to have babies. We’re going to be parents.”“Yes.”“At sixteen.”“Yep.” Peter wrung his hands nervously. “Oh God, you’re freaking out. I’m sorry. I told Tony that this couldn’t be sprung on you, but you know how he is and – ”“Peter?”“Yes.”“I’m not freaking out,” he promised, only to amend himself, “Okay, so maybe I am freaking out, but.” He swallowed. “I’m not mad.”He was a lot of things right now – shocked, baffled, terrified, nervous, anxious, but also happy. Yes, happy – but angry wasn’t one of them.Peter’s expression tentatively brightened. “You’re not?”“No. I mean, you said you didn’t know this was going to happen.”He jerked his head emphatically. “I didn’t.”That made him realize something. “Wait,” he said, intaking his breath so hard it whooshed past his teeth. “When did you find out, then?”Peter went back to the hand-wrangling. “Two days ago,” he admitted quietly. “I wasn’t feeling well so I asked May if I could stay home for the day, and she let me. I had cramps, felt queasy. Then I started gathering up all of my old pillowcases and clothes and your hoodie and I didn’t know why, and then, before I knew it...” He waved his hands around, giving a shaky laugh. “Eggs.”Harley tilted his head. “Wait, so you were alone when you...laid them?” He wanted to say “gave birth,” but he wasn’t sure if that was the correct terminology.“Yeah,” Peter said. He said it confidently, but Harley could tell it’d shaken him more than he was willing to let on. There were tears in his eyes.Harley didn’t even have to think about it, pulling him into a hug. “Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that on your own.”Peter sniffled, starting to cry once more. “It’s – it’s okay. You were in Tennessee, and I couldn’t let May or Tony come near me until that night. I just – I have to protect them, you know? I can’t let anything to happen to them. They’re ours.”Harley laughed wetly himself. “Yeah, they’re ours.”This entire situation was weirder beyond belief. But like he’d said, he was happy. Becoming a parent at sixteen had never been on his bingo card for his life, had never been something he’d assume would have happened to him (as although he was bisexual, his attraction to girls was much more fickler than his attraction to boys) of all people. But, he’d always wanted kids. Not now, but one day, yeah.And it wasn’t like they wouldn’t have a good support system in all of this. Peter’s aunt seemed like a strong woman, his own mother would be too when she came around to the idea, and then there was Tony. Harley had always been reluctant to accept his charity outside of the remodeling of his garage after the Mandarin incident, but he would now. For the sake of their kids, their kids, he wouldn’t give himself a choice.They would get through this, their small little family, no matter what came their way.“We’re going to be parents,” he repeated himself, except now, his happiness bled into his voice.Peter snorted lightly. “You already said that, Harley.”“Shut up, let me have this,” he ribbed without any real heat in his voice. He pressed a kiss to Peter’s forehead, and then another to his lips. It was short and chaste, not like the making out they’d done that night, but maybe that was a good thing. The twins were already going to be...a lot.Standing up, he sat on the bed and shucked off his shoes. Then he carefully crawled over and positioned himself around the nest, mindful of Peter’s phone and earbuds. He touched each of the eggs, and was in awe. The feeling of them was like nothing he’d ever felt before. They were perfect.At the foot of the bed, Peter was perched, joy written all over his face. Then, before Harley could do anything more than open his mouth, he padded over. It was an extreme balance, trying to get the two of them to fit with the eggs between them, but somehow, they made it work. It helped that Peter was extremely flexible.Peter looked up at him with those big brown eyes. “I love you,” he said.And maybe it was too soon for him to be saying it. They’d only been together in-person for a couple of weeks, and had only had that one night between them.But Harley didn’t mind saying it back. “I love you, too.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Peter could never, not in a million years, have imagined this was how his life would have gone.
There was no way they ever could have predicted that the spider bite had caused him to develop intersex characteristics on top of everything else. Well, maybe they could’ve, but there was no way they could have ever predicated that meant he would wind up laying eggs. That just – that just didn’t make sense. Humans were mammals. Spiders were oviparous. And technically, he supposed, if you really wanted to get down to it, he was somewhere in between the two reproductive methods now, but –Somehow, he didn’t really mind this turn of events. Or at least, not in the way he knew people would think he should’ve. Yes, the prospect of becoming a father – mother – whatever – at the age of sixteen was terrifying, and the way his instincts made him have this overwhelming urge to protect his babies was irritating, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. It had happened, and he, Harley, and the rest of their family were going to deal with it.In the month and a half since he’d laid his eggs, the other boy had come to live permanently in New York. The plan was for them and their children to all move to the Compound once they’d hatched, but for now he was splitting his time between there and the Parkers’ apartment. He took his shifts watching over the eggs, making it possible for Peter to eat, shower, do the schoolwork he couldn’t do in bed (Midtown had been told he had mono, and not even Ned had been told the complete truth, much to his chagrin. But no one outside of those who already did could know the truth about his children until they hatched, no one. He had to keep them safe at whatever cost, he just had to), and, most of all, live and breathe. When he was allowed even just a couple of hours a day to leave the eggs with Harley, knowing they were safe, he actually started to feel like himself again. His own person and everything.“You have mom brain,” May informed him when he complained to her once about how scatterbrained he felt even with the breaks, however, while he held a bowl of cereal in his hands and diligently tried to eat it. He’d been losing weight ever since the eggs had been laid due to a lack of eating, because his appetite kept on fluctuating back and forth, back and forth. Dr. Cho had said it was most likely due to his hormones, but sometimes he didn’t feel so sure.Peter tried not to choke on his cereal, having just taken a bite. “What?”“You have mom brain,” his aunt repeated. She ruffled his hair, which made him squawk and try to bat her hand away. “Oh, hush. It’s not like you’ve been going anywhere. Anyways, in the maternity unit, you quickly learn that there is such a thing as the mom brain. You have all this responsibility put on you, in the form of a living, breathing baby – especially if there’s more than one,” she added, since that was the case with him. “It makes you forgetful, gives you what’s described as ‘brain fog,’ which is what you’re experiencing. It doesn’t help that you have all of these hormones rushing through you, which you do.” She ran her hands up and down his arms, as if to prove her point.He didn’t like how that didn’t really comfort him. “Is it going to get better?”“In some ways. The brain fog will stop,” May hummed. “But I think you’re going to find your stress is only going to increase exponentially when they’re born.”His bottom lip trembled. “I’m sorry, May, I – ”She pulled him into a hug. “Hey, hey, hey,” she soothed. “Nobody could have foreseen this. It’s not your fault.”The door to his bedroom opened then. “If anything, it’s mine,” Harley attempted to joke, coming out to join them. The feeling of being enveloped by his aunt and his mate – he’d just about die if anybody heard him use that term, but so far he’d been able to keep it to himself – felt so good, for once he briefly didn’t even care the eggs had been left unattended. “I’m the one who knocked you up.”Peter laughed wetly. “Harley – !”“No, no, he has a point,” May said. But she was joking, too, mirth shining in her eyes. She’d quickly warmed up to Harley.Harley’s mother warming back up to him was...another matter. Peter hadn’t met her yet, not even by video call, although he’d heard them fighting on the phone before and Harley’s angry sighs as he texted with her. He at first tried to act like he wasn’t overly bothered by it, saying that she would come around once their babies hatched and she got to see them with her own two eyes, but Peter wasn’t having any of that.During the second or third of those infuriating texting conversations, he padded back into his bedroom, where Harley was. He settled down next to him with the nest between them, a position they’d become well-acquainted in attempting, and grabbed Harley’s phone right out of his hands.“Peter – ” Harley protested, frowning deeply.“Nope, you need a break from her,” Peter said, putting the phone on the nightstand they’d moved around to be closer to the bed. “I know she’s your mom, but that doesn’t give her the right to say bad things about you.”Harley’s expression hardened. “She’s not sayin’ that bad of things about me, darlin’.”“But she’s still saying bad things,” Peter pointed out. “That’s not okay. I’m sorry she’s doing that.”His blue eyes darted away. “It’s not that bad. It doesn’t bother me.”Peter flicked him on the nose, making him jerk bag in surprise. But he was still mindful of the eggs. “Don’t lie to me, I know it does,” he told him. “And I’m here for you. If you don’t want to talk with me about her in detail or show me her texts, I understand, but I love you. I don’t want you to suffer alone.”Harley didn’t speak to him in-depth about his mother, just for the record. But the next time he talked with his mother, the time that she really upset him, making him cry, he came up to Peter from behind, wrapping his arms around him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his tears falling into Peter’s hair. “It’s just – ”Peter turned around to hug him back. “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.” He didn’t mention how many times Harley had done the same for him, which he appreciated. He felt a lot like a leaky faucet these days.Harley’s sister, Abigail, was excited about the entire thing. Their mother only allowed her to call once or twice a week, but just like her brother, she was clever. She FaceTimed them at least once a week after she’d been sent to bed with her StarkPad, and knew how to delete any evidence that the video calls had been made.“Oh my God, they’re so pretty!” she squealed the first time she was shown the eggs.“Abigail, keep your voice down,” Harley had to admonish her. “Otherwise, Mom’s going to know you’re up.”But Harley’s sister was not deterred. “What are you going to name them?”The two boys shared a look.“...We’ve had some ideas,” Peter settled on saying.It was a waiting game. Peter could allow himself to be checked out by Dr. Cho, but the eggs – no way. Just allowing May and Mr. Stark around them for slightly extended periods of time was hard enough, and they were family. His instincts recognized them as such. So they didn’t know what genders the babies were, assuming an ultrasound would’ve been able to penetrate their membranes well enough to do so anyways. They didn’t know when they were going to hatch. Although something told him, after a month and a half, it would be soon.
Soon.
It was a nudge in the back of his brain, a sensation he felt deep in his bones. It made sense that the total gestation time of his and Harley’s children would be faster than that of a usual, nine month pregnancy. They were both enhanced. Him because of the radioactive spider, Harley because of the modified Extremis serum which ran through his veins and made him warmer to the touch than most people.It also made him a good space heater, due to Peter’s own circulation issues, but he digressed.On the morning of the third day before Christmas, the 22nd, he woke up shortly after nine o’clock. The outside was covered in a thick layer of snow, because a storm had come through during the middle of the night. If school had still been in session and they hadn’t been on break, he knew that school would have been cancelled. It looked like they were going to have a white Christmas after all; Harley had been looking forward to the possibility. Despite living in Appalachia, even if it was southern Appalachia, the last white Christmas he’d experienced had been back in 2012, during the Mandarin incident and when he’d met Mr. Stark.But, that was not important. Peter woke up that morning, and he pulled back the blanket he’d placed over his window to look outside, and then he looked back towards the eggs. His children. He looked at them, and he heard their soft heartbeats which had steadily grown stronger over the past month and a half, and he saw how the light from the window went almost through the eggs instead of glinting off of them like it had ever since they had grown hard. He reached out to touch them, and sure enough he discovered the membranes felt softer than they had before. Not as paper thin as they had when they’d first come out of him, but. Flexible.And damp, like the outermost layer of the membranes had turned into liquid, as impossible as it sounded.Just like that, he knew.“May! May!” he shouted, running out of his room, his socked feet skidding on the fake wooden floors, like he was Tom Cruise during that one scene of the Risky Business movie. And perhaps that wasn’t too far off the case: he was dressed in the Hello Kitty flannel pants Mr. Stark had gotten him the day he’d taken his suit, but with an old science pun t-shirt more to his size. The only difference was...well, he was wearing pants.His aunt had the day off, which was perhaps his saving grace this time around. It comforted him on a primal level, to know he wouldn’t be alone this time around outside of Harley; laying the eggs all by himself was an experience he never wanted to repeat again.He bursted into May’s room, throwing the door wide open. He shook her shoulder. “May, wake up!”She’d had the late shift last night, so it took her a moment to do so. “...‘eter,” she mumbled, blearily opening her eyes. “What is it?”The look on his face probably said it all, judging by how her eyes widened. But, just to make sure: “It’s time,” he said. “They’re going to hatch. Today.”May helped him call Harley. His hands were shaky from the adrenaline, making him fumble with his phone. She took it from him and put the phone on speaker, placing it on the counter.Harley was awake, because of course he was. As soon as he realized what was going on, they heard a shuffle of movement on his side as he shot up out of bed. “I’m going to go get Tony,” he promised. “Give us, like, five minutes, then we’ll be on our way. Okay?”“Okay,” Peter repeated.The next hour and a half felt like the most nerve-wracking one of his entire life. Not even laying the eggs had been as bad. He’d been scared then, completely and utterly terrified, but the need to nest and the deep, all-encompassing pain had masked some of that. But this time, he didn’t have his instincts taking over his brain like then, leaving him to face his anxieties entirely sober.The eggs wobbled during that timeframe, and he didn’t think it was something new, but something they had been doing for a while as he’d slept. They didn’t rock like bird eggs, when the chick pecked at the shell of its egg, trying to get out – but that made sense, because they weren’t bird eggs. They were...his eggs. Human arachnid eggs. There hadn’t been anything like them before, and wouldn’t be again, if he and Harley didn’t want additional children and their current ones did not inherit his reproductive characteristics.Because if Harley didn’t want any more children with him, he wouldn’t have them. Not in this way.(Not at all, a voice said in the back of his mind, although that didn’t make sense to him. Spiders weren’t exactly known for being monogamous or mating for life.)But anyways, the eggs wobbled more like it was because their shells were no longer thick and hard anymore and the babies were too big inside for them not to move, which was probably a valid assumption. They had to have been growing inside the eggs still after they had been laid.He didn’t dare to touch the eggs again. He wanted to, God did he want to, but he was afraid. What happened if he touched them and that was all the encouragement they needed, and then they hatched before Harley could arrive? He didn’t want to rob another moment from him, no matter how he knew Harley wouldn’t have been able to make it when the eggs had been laid, since he hadn’t realized what was going on until it had been too late.Just when Peter thought he was going to go insane, he heard footsteps coming down the hallway of their floor, approaching. He ran out of his bedroom and towards the front door without even thinking about it, still dressed in his pajamas. “Peter,” May called after him for some unfathomable reason. “Peter, wait – !”But she needn’t have worried, because it was Harley on the other side, not having even gotten the chance to knock. He made a startled noise as Peter threw his arms around his neck, spinning him around, and then pulling him into a kiss. It was the first and only thing Peter had thought to do at the sight of him.“...Well, there’s some PDA,” he heard Mr. Stark remark dryly. He also heard him close the door shut behind them.But he didn’t care about any of that.“They’re hatching,” Peter said the second he pulled away, looking into Harley’s blue, blue eyes. As unlikely as he knew it was due to genetics, he hoped at least one of their children inherited those eyes. “I mean, not right now, but – ”“So you said,” Harley replied. He looked down at his hands, then back behind him, to Mr. Stark. “We brought...stuff.”Indeed, they had. The other boy was holding what looked to be a bag of baby clothes, diapers, bottles, and formula. Mr. Stark had set down two baby-carriers at his feet. “For when we take them up to the Compound, once you’re comfortable with it,” he explained. “I know, I know, you’re probably not going to want to do it immediately, but still.”Peter felt his throat tighten. Mr. Stark had been so good to him and Harley throughout all of this. He didn’t think anybody else would’ve not only been able to keep their cool (for the most part), but also have offered up their house to house him, his mate, and his children without even thinking about it. Granted, he did have more than enough space to give them up at the Compound, and he knew Mr. Stark had probably done a lot more than just that without their say-so (like putting aside college funds well into the six figures, for instance, because that was just who Mr. Stark was), which kind of irked him, but still. His mentor really went above and beyond for the people he loved.“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” he told the man, hoping his tone would convey just how much he was thanking him for.His mentor smiled. “‘Course, kid. I’d do anything for you two.”Peter looked back at Harley. Their eyes locked.“The eggs,” they said in unison.They ran into Peter’s bedroom, Harley dropping the bag with the baby stuff on the floor. Peter left the door open, but not without a warning of, “You guys probably shouldn’t really come in yet!”His instincts didn’t feel as intense as they had throughout the rest of this entire thing, but he didn’t want to chance it. He still felt really bad about how he’d punched Happy in the face, despite the man had assured him numerous times since then that it hadn’t been his fault.Rather than climbing up onto the bed this time, he and Harley settled down in front of it. Peter pulled away the blanket which had obscured the nest from view for all this time.“What do we do?” Harley whispered. “I mean, do we wait, or – whoa.”At the sound of his voice, both of the eggs began to wobble more. With their enhanced ears, each of their parents could hear the sounds of their children shifting inside. They also heard a whimper from one of them – barely discernible, but it was there.Harley abruptly sniffed. “Peter.”Peter didn’t stop himself now from reaching out to touch the eggs’ surfaces. They were even thinner, damper, feeling not too much unlike the texture of a water balloon.But, that presented an interesting problem.He inhaled deeply. “I think...” he started afterwards. “I think we need to help them.”He knew their children could probably get out of their eggs on their own, after enough working at it, but he didn’t much feel like waiting that long. Besides, helping them felt right, from both a logical and primal level.Peter focused on the egg closer to him. He pinched the membrane of the egg together – which felt almost like skin, as weird as it sounded – until he felt it give way beneath him. Slowly, he began to pull the membrane back, making a larger and larger hole in the egg.There was a shock of a full head of blonde hair, even though the baby was only the size of a six-month-old. But it looked as developed as a proper newborn should. He saw the face, complete with ruddy cheeks, two hands with five fingers each, two tiny legs. Those legs started to kick when the membrane – shell – whatever – was about halfway off, helping it to come off the rest of the way.Then the baby sucked in a breath, before letting out a quiet cry.“Oh,” Harley gasped. “Oh, shit.”Peter stood up so he could place his hands underneath the baby’s frame properly, as May had taught him to. Then he picked them up. Except, no –The baby was a he. That much was obvious.“It’s a boy,” he informed Harley. “It’s Conor.”Conor Benjamin Keener. That was one of the names they’d decided on for a boy.Harley’s mouth formed into an “O.” He rushed to his feet, coming around to his side. “Oh my God,” he laughed, staring down at their son, who was beginning to cry in earnest. He waved around one of his hands mightily, until Harley offered his index finger to him. Then he grabbed it and refused to let go. “Hey there, Conor.”Unlike Peter, he said it loud enough that Mr. Stark and May could hear it from the doorway. Peter heard his aunt let out a choked cry.He shifted Conor into Harley’s hold, before he turned back towards the bed.Peter wanted to go fast, fast, fast, he wanted to meet their second child as soon as possible, but he took his time with the second egg as he had with Conor. This baby had light brown hair, already curling. When the membrane was most of the way off, he was able to see what they were.“Harley,” he said. “We have a Maeve.”Maeve Rose Keener. Their daughter, named after the two most important women in their lives, even if one of them still wasn’t really on speaking terms with them right now.He picked up Maeve as she began to wail and shushed her gently with noises he hadn’t even known his vocal cords could produce – another side effect of the spider bite, he was sure.The trills, for lack of a better word, calmed her and her brother. When she opened her eyes, she revealed them to be a distinctive hazel, like they had already settled despite her literally just being born. Conor’s were a vibrant, bluish-green.Tears were running down his cheeks. He hadn’t noticed them until now.But that was okay. He wasn’t the only one.Harley gave him a watery grin. “We’re parents, Peter.”“Yeah,” he agreed. “We’re parents.”He looked back towards the doorway. “Okay. It’s...okay, I think.”He didn’t feel like he had the potential to hurt them at a moment’s notice anymore.His aunt and Mr. Stark didn’t need to be told twice. They entered his room much like they had the day he’d laid the eggs: slowly, as an acknowledgement they were on his terms.“You know, I think I prefer this method of childbirth,” his aunt tried to joke. “It takes less time, there seems to be less risk involved...” She had to leave it at there, her breaths becoming shallow. “You did it, Peter.”“Yep. Gold star, kid,” quipped his mentor.But.Harley snickered. “Are you crying, Old Man?”“Nope. Not at all.” A pause. “...Okay, so maybe I am. But we’re not telling Pep about this.”(She totally found out later, for what it was worth.)They didn’t immediately clean off Conor and Maeve and bring them up to the Compound. Peter and Harley took turns having skin-on-skin contact with them, until they could coax them into taking their first bottles. It was only then that they cleaned them up and got them decked out in their teeny-tiny preemie clothes, and took them out to the car. It probably wasn’t the best of circumstances to move them so soon, but there had never been a set of circumstances like these before. It helped that, according to May, they’d quickly gone from being only a few hours born to several hours, at least in terms of development.At the Compound, Dr. Cho gave Conor and Maeve a clean bill of health. She said that she wanted to see them back in a week, but that they seemed to be the perfect newborns, all things considered.They brought them up to the apartment originally meant for the Bartons, which Tony had remodeled for them. May made sure everything about the apartment was alright for the umpteenth time, before she cupped his face in her hands and kissed him on the forehead. “I am proud of you, Peter. Don’t you ever forget that,” she told him. She pressed a second kiss to his brow. “I love you. If you need anything, I’m just a call away. If not, I’ll see you on Christmas Eve when Happy brings me up.”“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Love you too, May.”She did the same with Harley, much to his surprise, awe, and adoration. He pulled her into an almost bone-crunching hug for it, which she reciprocated happily.Tony took a little more convincing to coax out of the apartment. He didn’t want to overstay his welcome, but he was also just content to be there with him all. May had to practically drag him out.Once they were gone, it was just him, Harley, and their twins in the apartment, but Conor and Maeve were sleeping in their room.Peter yawned, retreating into his and Harley’s room to lay down for a nap, the day beginning to wear on him. He knew their bed was soft from laying down on it before, so much softer than his at May’s apartment, and he was anxious to sleep in it for the first time.Harley followed after him – not to sleep, because sleeping wasn’t something he did a lot of. But he did lay down next to him, and it was much more comfortable for them to do it on this king-sized mattress instead of the long twin in his old bedroom, without the nest between them. “Thank you, darlin’,” he spoke, his voice all soft and tender. “For everything.”Peter was too tired to formulate a proper response. “Mmhmm,” was all that came out of his mouth, making Harley snort.He fell asleep quickly, the weight of the world seeming to fall off his shoulders now that the twins had been born, perfect and healthy. They were safe. They were going to be alright.Everything was going to be alright, one way or the other.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Daddy! Papa!”Peter made a noise in the back of his throat as he felt two familiar weights crash onto him. Next to him, he heard Harley similarly groan, although he fared a little better than him. “...‘Morning, Conor. ‘Morning, Maeve,” he said, to which their twins giggled. His husband sounded pretty much as tired as he felt.Turing over onto his back from his side, Peter opened his eyes. His son and daughter were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – which, could he just say, he wasn’t quite sure to this day where that had come from. Neither he nor Harley were that much of morning people.“‘Morning, honeys,” he told them, bringing a hand up to his mouth to cover his yawn.“Good morning, Papa,” Maeve repeated to him, before she crawled over him – making him wince from the pain – to press a kiss to her other father’s cheek. “‘Morning, Daddy.”Harley pressed a kiss to her forehead, while Peter sat up and pulled Conor into his lap to do the same to every inch of his face, causing him to laugh all over again. “Papa!” he cried. “Stop!”“Alright, I’ll stop. Now, what do the two of you want this very fine morning?”“Breakfast,” they said in unison.Harley snickered. “Okay, Mayday, Benji. I’ll get you some breakfast. Just let me talk with Papa for a moment first.”“Uh, huh,” Maeve went, while Conor nodded.Then, just as soon as they had busted into the room, they ran back out of it, presumably down the hall and into the main room of their apartment.Once they were gone, Harley looked over at him, his eyes going soft. “Good morning, husband,” he went, cupping his face with a hand in order to place a chaste kiss to his lips.Peter smiled. “Good morning to you too, husband.”“Are you feeling better this morning?”“Mostly,” he answered. “Still a little too tired, but it’s fine. Don’t worry about me. Go make breakfast for the kids.”“And you,” Harley added as he stood up. He went over to his dresser to take out one of his nightshirts and put it on. “What do you want this morning? Pancakes? Waffles? Eggs and toast?”Peter wasn’t going to admit to it, but he actually wasn’t all that hungry this morning. “Whatever the kids want is fine.”Unfortunately, Harley seemed to pick up on this – which probably should’ve been expected, given that, due to his metabolism, Peter wasn’t ever really not that hungry. “Are you sure?” he asked, clarifying with, “About the food, and that you’re feeling better?”“I’m fine, promise,” Peter replied. He made a shooing movement with his hands. “Now, go, before the munchkins come back. I’ll be out there in a minute.”Harley did as he was told, though not without closing the door behind him. He really was the greatest romantic partner in the entire world.Peter grimaced as he stretched, feeling and hearing the vertebrae in his spine crack, before he put his feet on the ground and got out of bed. Last night’s patrol had been kind of difficult, for whatever reason. It hadn’t been because of the perps, or the weather, or anything else...it just hadn’t felt right. He hoped he wasn’t getting into one of those ruts again.It had been just over six years since Maeve and Ben had been born; they’d celebrated their birthday last week. Six years. To say that their family had had its ups and downs since then would be an understatement. Then again, so had the rest of the world – scratch that, the universe.Six months after the twins had hatched, the forces that had caused the Chitauri Invasion back in 2012 had returned. They’d been working for Thanos, a genocidal maniac who had wanted to use the six Infinity Stones to halve the population of the entire universe.Well. Perhaps it was incorrect for him to say that Thanos had “wanted” to eradicate half of the entire universe. He’d damn well actually done it.He, Harley, the twins, Tony, and Pepper had survived what had become known as the Snap, the Blip, the Decimation, or any other of several names, but...May hadn’t. Ned hadn’t. Harley’s mother, who still hadn’t come around by the time she’d been turned into dust, as well as his sister Abigail hadn’t.They’d survived, pulled through. When you were the parents of two babies, then toddlers, then young children, you didn’t have the choice not to. He and Harley had gone to college at Columbia after graduating from high school and getting married the summer afterwards, since they hadn’t wanted to go to college out of state, much to Tony’s faux-horror (really, he’d been incredibly happy and proud of them, make no doubts about that). They’d earned their bachelor’s degrees a year early, and Harley was in the process of getting his master’s in Business so he could take over that side of SI for Pepper one day. Peter was taking a year or two as a break from college, but he intended to go back to school and get his master’s in Bioengineering and Biochemistry, if not his doctorate, so that he could take over the R&D Department. You know, so he could be Spider-Man, the head of Stark Industries’ Research & Development, and a father, all in one.It wasn’t like he wasn’t following in Tony’s footsteps, though. Pepper had been pregnant at the time of the Snap, although they hadn’t realized that yet. That following December, she’d given birth to one Ms. Morgan Helena Stark, who was just as smart as her father but with her mother’s ferocity. It hadn’t surprised any of them when she’d gotten close to Conor and Maeve once she’d become old enough. The three of them were like birds of a feather.But he was getting away from himself.He, Harley, Tony, and Pepper had fared about as well as anybody could’ve during the Blip, but a lot of people hadn’t. That was why, when Scott Lang had come back from the Quantum Realm talking about how he thought they could all save the universe, Peter hadn’t even thought about not trying to get everyone back. He’d been the one to get Tony on board, and then they’d travelled back in time to bring everyone back using the Infinity Stones, since Thanos had destroyed theirs so that nobody could undo what he had done.There had been losses, because of it. Clint Barton had died so that Natasha had been able to bring back the Soul Stone. More people had died in their battle against the younger Thanos, including Steve Rogers, who had sacrificed himself in order to snap Thanos and his army out of existence.But, it had worked. They’d gotten everybody who had been turned into dust back and then some, in the case of Loki and half of the Asgardians. And Peter was never going to stop being thankful for that. He had May back in his life, and his aunt had just about cried a river when she’d realized five and a half years had passed in the blink of an eye for her and the world now knew that he was Spider-Man (long story there), but she was back. He had Ned back too, who had balked at how he and MJ, who was going to school at Stanford with her girlfriend, Gwen, were now five years older, and most of all that he was a parent (he’d never gotten around to telling him about Conor and Maeve before the Blip, and that remained one of the biggest regrets of his life to this day). And Harley’s mom, Evelyn, had attended the twins’ birthday party and hugged the living daylights out of Harley while there, having sobbed about how sorry she was for how things had inadvertently ended between them, so. It looked like things were only going to get better there.But, not to change the topic or anything...Peter had been feeling decidedly off the last couple of weeks. He’d been more tired lately, and sorer. His appetite had been coming and going. Harley was convinced that he needed to go see Helen or Bruce for it, but he was willing to give it a couple more days. The two of them weren’t old, they were only twenty-two, but they weren’t teenagers anymore, either. Changes in the body were to be expected because of that....That was what he was going with, anyways.In the main rom, Conor and Maeve were seated at their small table, practically bouncing in their seats as Harley set their plates down in front of them: it looked like this morning’s breakfast was eggs, toast, turkey bacon, and hash brown patties that Harley must’ve fished out of the freezer. Now that he was in the room, it all smelled incredibly appetizing.But first, coffee. Peter made a beeline over to the machine, only stopping long enough to loudly smack a kiss to Harley’s cheek, making their children giggle. “Thank you, babe,” he said. “It all smells amazing.”“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” Harley returned smoothly. And God, the way he said it was so hot.“Papa,” Conor asked towards the end of breakfast. He was the quieter of their two children, and the more polite one. “Are we going to Morgan’s today?”“It’s Saturday,” he reminded him. “Of course we are.”“Yes!” Maeve crowed excitedly.He and Harley shared a knowing look. You’d think, he thought, given that this has been the routine for the past two years, they’d know the drill by now.But, being a parent had taught him young children had the attention spans of goldfish, and even when they were well-acquainted with the routine like his and Harley’s kids were, they liked the reminder.After breakfast, Peter worked on cleaning up the dishes as the kids got their hour of morning TV in. Then he and Harley tag-teamed getting Conor and Maeve into their clothes for their playdate with Morgan, and changed into their own clothes. He gathered up their pajamas afterwards, tossing the kids’ into his and Harley’s hamper, because even though it wasn’t the day to wash their clothes, that would be tomorrow, he knew he might as well.It was his turn to “cook” for lunch, so he made them some paninis and got out the veggie chips. As Harley liked to put it, he was “woefully inept” at cooking when it came to most dishes, just like Tony, so it was the best that he could do.The kids grew antsier the closer they got to finishing their meal. “Papa,” Maeve whined just as soon as she’d put down the crusts of her sandwich. “Can you put my hair into pigtails before we go? I want pigtails today.”He hadn’t finished his sandwich yet, but he knew his daughter, so he got up and went into her and Conor’s bedroom to get two of her curl-friendly hair ties. Just like his mother, she had tightly-wound locks of hair, and caring for them had been something MJ had taken upon herself to teach him and Harley once she’d found out about him being Spider-Man and them having kids during their senior year. “You don’t want her to grow up thinking her curls are something bad,” she’d said. She’d been incredibly patient with them throughout the entire learning process.“Language,” he’d chided.“She’s a baby. She’s not going to remember me cussing around her.”Peter put the laundry into the dryer before they left a quarter till noon. A part of him felt incredibly excited at the prospect of having fresh, clean clothes once they came home, and he wasn’t exactly sure of why. He filed the feeling away for later.After their first year of college, they had decided to move back into the city from the (now destroyed) Compound, since it had just been easier for their schedules. Tony had bought and then given them a five-bedroom penthouse, complete with a terrace that they’d installed privacy frequencies into to protect their children from the media.As soon as the press had discovered that Conor and Maeve were their children biologically, no female component involved, they’d pretty much had a conniption fit. Stories had ensued for weeks and weeks and weeks about how they had been born (something the press still didn’t know the answer to), if they had powers, if they were going to be superheroes some day, and etcetera. He hoped to God that the third one didn’t happen, but...yeah, his kids could already stick to walls. They had enhanced senses. Who the hell knew what was going to come next with them?Morgan was waiting for them on the wrap-around porch of Tony and Pepper’s cabin. “Connie! Maeve!” she exclaimed. And then, because she was so sweet and didn’t want to leave them out, “Uncle Peter! Uncle Harley!”“Hey, Maguna,” he greeted her.“Munchkin,” Harley called her, ruffling her hair as she pulled Conor and Maeve into a hug.“That’s not nice, Uncle Harley,” Morgan went, making a face, before she grabbed Conor and Maeve by the hands. “Come on, come on, come inside!”Tony was in the living room and Pepper was in the connecting kitchen, presumably working on getting some snacks for the kids.“Hey, you two,” Tony greeted them. He looked the most relaxed he ever had since October. It looked like today was a good day for him. “What’s up?”“Oh, been busy, as always,” Peter remarked. There was zero hesitation from him in hugging Tony, and the same went the other way around. Their relationship had come a long way from the strained mentor/mentee one it had been during his sophomore year of high school. “You?”“Not at as busy,” Tony joked.“Bet that’s a lie, Mechanic,” Harley quipped, also going in for a hug after Peter pulled away.His husband was content to remain in the living room with Tony then, where he was sure their kids would bound out to once given their snacks, but Peter walked into the kitchen. “Hey, Pep. Is there anything you need me to do?”She turned around to give him a smile. “Hi, Peter. Can you get me the Nutella from the pantry?”It looked like the kids would be snacking on bananas and pretzels with the spread and a glass of milk each, or so he thought from the small plates she had on the counter. “Yep.” He opened up and rummaged through the Starks’ pantry like only somebody who had been to their house on a weekly basis for several years could (which was true), before he got out the Nutella jar and handed it to her. “Here you go.”“Can you also get out the milk?”“Sure thing.”“Wait, Morgan, Conor, Maeve,” Pepper warned. The second she’d put down their plates and drinks on the table, they’d grabbed them and ran into the living room. She sighed, before glancing at him fondly. “Kids, right?”He laughed. “Kids.”She started to clean up the small mess she had made. “So, how are you, by the way? Harley told me you still haven’t been feeling the greatest when I talked to him last.”Peter groaned. “That traitor. I swear, I’m fine, Pepper. Nothing’s wrong with me.”Her eyes crinkled at the edges as she dried off her hands with a towel. “Are you sure?”“Yeah, positive. I’ve just been a little extra tired lately.”“Harley said it wasn’t just that. Your appetite’s also been a little different lately?”He shrugged. “It happens sometimes. Not a big deal.”“...Alright,” she relented. “If you’re sure.”“I am.”Back in the living room, Tony and Harley were watching the kids playing with Morgan’s dolls. They were caught up in their own little world, completely oblivious to their surroundings.Peter sat down next to Tony instead of Harley. He put his cheek on Tony’s shoulder.Tony chuckled. “Feeling a little clingy today, Spider-Man?”He mock-scowled. “Shut up.”“Sorry, sorry,” Tony replied, although he didn’t actually sound that sorry at all. “Has everything been going fine for you and Nat?”Ah, yes: father, husband, Spider-Man, Avenger. Those were all his titles right now, not including the one in his future.Natasha had become the leader of the Avengers after Thanos’ Snap, and it was a title that had remained to her after October. Peter was kind of her right-hand man with Steve gone now, since Sam, Bucky, and Wanda were still dealing with the effects of being dead for five years, Bruce was still recovering from his usage of the Infinity Stones, and Rhodey was taking a step back from the business right now to focus on his military promotion. Not to mention, Carol was back to being off-world again for who knew how long.“Fine,” Peter answered him. “Things are quiet right now. No offshoots of HYDRA to take down or anything. Nat said everybody’s still just relishing in the fact we got everyone back.”“As they should be,” Tony concurred. “What about May? Are she and Happy back to dancing around each other again?”“God, I don’t even want to think about that.”He felt Tony’s shoulders shake. “What, you don’t want to have Happy as your step-uncle in the near future?”“First of all, that’s not how that works. Second of all, thank you for making me now think about it.”Tony laughed outright.Despite how he had had two large cups of coffee that morning, Peter felt the drag of exhaustion wear on him. He’d sat next to Tony on the corner part of his and Pepper’s couch, so it was easy for him to resettle into the section where the two halves of the couch met, using a pillow to bolster his lower back. Tony made a show of grabbing the blanket resting on the couch’s back and giving it to him. “Seriously, how much sleep did you get last night?”“Enough,” Peter insisted.He didn’t sleep as he sat there, just rested his eyes. The kids tried at one point to get him to play with them, but he deflected them successfully. “Why don’t you have Dad play with you instead?” he suggested to Conor and Maeve, and of course since they turned their efforts on to him, Morgan did as well.“Thank you,” Harley mouthed at him.He huffed out a laugh, but was too tired to reply back.“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tony asked him at the end of the visit, after they’d buckled Conor and Maeve into their carseats. “Pepper said you said you’re fine, but – ”Peter threw his hands in the air. “If I say I’m fine for the millionth time, will y’all finally believe me?”...Yes, he’d wound up picking up on some of Harley’s speech mannerisms over the past six years. No, he wasn’t going to talk about that.Tony was abashed. “Point taken.” He cleared his throat. “I – we – just worry about you, Pete. Harley, too – ” he gestured with his head over to where Harley was talking with Pepper, saying his goodbyes to her “ – but with you it’s different, especially since some of this feels...familiar.”Peter frowned. “What do you mean ‘familiar?’”His mentor shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he spoke, clapping him on the shoulder. “Probably just an old man seeing things that aren’t there. It’s nothing, promise.”Maeve giggled on the ride home. “Papa, why are you wriggling?”Peter grunted. “Just...trying to get comfortable.”His jaw was clenched, but it wasn’t the only part of him that was. Every muscle in his body seemed to be tensed, including the ones in his lower back. Most of all, the ones in his lower back.Harley momentarily took his eyes off the road to look at him. He let go of the steering wheel with his right hand to grab Peter’s left. “Darlin’, are you sure we shouldn’t stop by the Tower?”Tony had bought back his Tower after the Vulture fiasco. It’d remained SI Headquarters, but now with the Avengers Compound having been destroyed, it was also acting as temporary headquarters for them once more.He hissed. “I’m fine, Harley. Besides, it’s Saturday. Helen’s not going to be there.”“I’m sure if we called her, she would – ”“Can we just go home?” His tone came out harsher than he’d meant it to. Peter heard their children go quiet at it. He wilted. “Sorry, guys. Papa shouldn’t have yelled. Just...I’d rather we go home. I think we could all do with some naps...”Predictably, his children made faces. “No naps, Papa,” Conor begged. “Please.”“Not even a short one before dinner?”“No...”Harley squeezed his hand. “We can do that,” he agreed softly. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to upset ya.”“You didn’t upset me,” Peter assured him. “I just...”
I don’t know what’s going on with me today.
He pressed his palms to his eyes and focused on taking some deep breaths. In, out. In, out.Despite their protests, the twins were indeed ready for a short nap when they got back to their apartment. Harley worked on putting them down. Peter wanted to take a nap too, like he’d said, but he knew he had to put away their laundry first. He got out their clothes from the dryer, putting Conor’s and Maeve’s PJs into their dressers and kissing them on the foreheads before he left. Then he took the hamper with his and Harley’s clothes back into their room, setting about getting the clothes folded before he put them away.At least, that’s what he thought he was doing.He was about halfway through the hamper when Harley walked into the room. He heard his husband sharply intake a breath, making him look up in surprise. Harley’s face was pale, making the few freckles that he had stand out sharply. “Peter, what are you doing?” he asked.“Uh...” Peter blinked. “Folding clothes?”He phrased it like a question, but that was what he was doing, right?...Right?He looked down.His mouth dropped open.About the first quarter or so of the clothes were folded. The rest...without even noticing it, he’d arranged them haphazardly into a pile with an indent in the middle. A very familiar pile.Peter swallowed.Suddenly, it all made sense to him. His appetite and exhaustion of late. The tensing of his muscles, especially the ones in his lower back. Why Tony had said earlier it all seemed “familiar.” Because it was familiar. He’d been through this once before. He’d just been oblivious enough to not notice the signs leading up to the grand finale once again.He sucked in a breath as another cramp – a contraction, that was what it was – started. It was so bad it made his knees weak.Harley caught him before he fell. “Peter,” he said. He hoisted him up onto the bed. “Hey, what do you need me to do?”“Harley,” Peter gasped.How had he not noticed this? Ignoring his current set of symptoms, for the past four and a half months, he’d been pregnant. He’d fought during their battle against Thanos in October while being pregnant. And for the second time in his life, he hadn’t caught on to that fact. Not until the heat of the moment, when he was going into labor.Stupid, he thought. How much of an idiot am I?Harley clasped their hands together like this was a completely normal thing, helping his husband go through the beginnings of labor of their eggs...however many of them there were this time. “Come on, breathe with me,” he requested, placing their foreheads together. “Take a deep breath, sweetheart.”Shakily, he did as he was told.When the contraction was over, he let his head fall and rest against Harley’s shoulder. “Harley, I’m sorry,” he began to babble. “I didn’t even realize...I’m pregnant, and I didn’t kn – ”“It’s okay, I didn’t either. But we’re going to get through this,” the love of his life soothed. He leaned back so that Peter could see his face. He was wearing a watery smile, but it wasn’t a bad one. “We were talking about wanting another one or two, right? And it’s not like we don’t have the room or anything, or the time to get baby supplies. ‘Sides...” He traced a thumb underneath Peter’s left eye. He hadn’t even realized he was beginning to cry. “You’re not going to go through this alone, not again.”
“Not again.”
Peter let out a wet laugh. This was all completely unexpected, but that was true. Giving birth to Conor’s and Maeve’s eggs on his own had been a completely horrible experience, but that wasn’t going to happen this time. Not when the other father of his children was standing right in front of him.“What do you need me to do?” Harley asked again.Peter maneuvered himself around so that he was facing the nest and laid down. Up until the second stage of labor, he remembered that this had been the most comfortable position for him to be in. “Stay with me,” he requested, voice slightly slurring as his eyes squeezed shut from the pain. “Don’t go.”He felt the bed dip as Harley slid in behind him. “Not for the world,” he promised, kissing his ear. “...We probably should call May, though. Someone’s going to need to watch the kids.”Four hours later, after a long and arduous process to say the least, Peter smiled as Harley led Conor and Maeve into their room. Conor was looking at him with wide eyes, his thumb stuck in his mouth like he still did sometimes despite being six years old, while Maeve was entirely curious. “Papa, Papa, is it true?” she begged. “Did you lay more eggs?”In spite of how complicated it made keeping the secret of their birth, Harley and Peter had never hidden how Conor and Maeve had come into the world from them. Never.Peter’s smile widened. He really wanted to go to sleep right now as his sweat made his hair cling to his forehead, but he knew he could stay awake for a little bit longer. “Just the one,” he corrected his daughter. He patted the dry half of the bed next to him. “Do you want to come see them?”Maeve and Connor were all too happy to oblige, rushing forwards as they had earlier that morning. They sat next to him on the bed, Harley pulling them into his lap as he did the same to prevent them from getting too close. As he did, he kissed Peter’s cheek, making him laugh.There were no doubts in his mind that this, along with Conor and Maeve’s, was probably one of the weirdest birth stories in the entire world. But you know what?Unless it meant him realizing sooner this time what had been going on, he wouldn’t do a damn thing to change it.“I love you,” he told Conor and Maeve (and Harley), his voice muffled from how he’d burrowed his face into their hair. “I love you all so much.”“We love you too, Papa.”“Love you, darlin’.”