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The lake house was quiet in the way that only places surrounded by too many trees and not enough neighbors could be. No honking, no sirens, no rattling of subway grates beneath his feet. Just the low hum of crickets and the occasional thud of a pinecone bouncing off the roof.
Peter still wasn't used to it.
He sat cross-legged on the dock with his chemistry textbook balanced on one knee and a half-eaten sandwich on the other, the afternoon sun warming the back of his neck as he tried and mostly failed to focus on thermodynamic equilibrium. Somewhere behind him, Morgan was singing a made-up song to an audience of pinecones she'd arranged in a semicircle on the grass, and the soft rhythm of her tiny voice carried down the slope.
It had been almost nine months since the adoption papers were signed, seven months since he'd moved the last of his boxes out of May's old apartment and into the room at the end of the upstairs hallway, the one with the sloped ceiling and the window that looked out over the lake. Tony had offered to renovate it with every piece of technology known to man, and Peter had to physically stop him from installing a retractable suit dock in the closet.
"It's a bedroom, Mr. Stark, not a command center."
"First of all, kid, we've been over this. It's Tony. Or Dad. Or hey-you-with-the-goatee. Literally anything other than Mr. Stark."
Peter still slipped up sometimes.
The thing about having enhanced senses was that the lake house never truly felt quiet, not to him. Peter could hear everything. The soft mechanical whirring of Tony's prosthetic arm as he worked down in the workshop. The padding of Morgan's bare feet on the hardwood. Happy's SUV crunching gravel at the end of the driveway a full minute before anyone else noticed. And heartbeats, he heard those most of all.
Tony's resting heart rate was a steady sixty-two beats per minute, a little slower than it had been before the snap, something to do with the modified pacemaker that Dr. Cho had implanted during recovery. Peter had memorized that rhythm the way most people memorize a favorite song, the constant proof that Tony Stark was alive and here and not dust or ash or a name on a memorial.
Morgan's heartbeat was faster, lighter, like a hummingbird. It quickened when she was excited and slowed to an almost imperceptible whisper when she fell asleep on the couch after dinner, her head inevitably settling into Peter's lap.
And then there was Pepper.
Peter heard the screen door swing open before Pepper even stepped outside, and he tracked her footsteps across the porch by sound alone. She was carrying something, a tray from the sound of the ceramic clinking gently, and she was heading towards the workshop.
The moment Pepper passed the threshold of Tony's workshop, it happened. Like clockwork, Peter felt the shift in Tony's heartbeat. Sixty-two became sixty-eight, then seventy, a subtle but unmistakable acceleration that had nothing to do with exertion or surprise.
Peter smiled to himself and turned a page in his textbook.
He'd first noticed it a few weeks after moving in. Pepper had walked into the kitchen one morning while Tony was making his fourth espresso of the day, and Peter had nearly choked on his cereal. Tony's heart had lurched like a teenager spotting his crush across a cafeteria. After almost fifteen years of marriage, an alien invasion, a near-death experience, and two kids who, between them, could probably level a small building, the man's heart still raced when his wife entered a room.
Peter found it equal parts adorable and devastating.
"Petey!" Morgan's voice broke through his thoughts, and a pinecone bounced off his shoulder with surprising accuracy for a five-year-old. "Come play court with me! You can be the dragon."
"What kind of court has a dragon?" Peter asked, twisting around to look at her. She stood with her hands on her hips and a crown of woven dandelions sitting crookedly on her head.
"My court. I'm the queen. Keep up."
Peter snorted and set the textbook aside. Thermodynamic equilibrium could wait. He dutifully trotted up the slope and folded himself onto the grass beside Morgan's pinecone audience, assuming what he hoped was a convincing dragon posture.
"You're not very scary," Morgan observed, tilting her head.
"I'm a friendly dragon."
"There's no such thing."
"What about Toothless?"
Morgan considered this for exactly two seconds before nodding in solemn agreement, as though Peter had presented a legally binding argument. "Fine. You can be a Toothless dragon. But you still have to roar when I say so."
And so Peter roared on command, chased Morgan in circles around the yard, and let her ride on his back while she held aloft a stick she had dubbed the Royal Scepter of Ultimate Power. At some point, Happy emerged from the house to watch from the porch, arms folded, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he caught Peter looking and immediately schooled his expression back to stoic indifference.
By the time the sun began its slow descent behind the treeline, painting the lake in shades of copper and rose gold, Peter had grass stains on his jeans and a dandelion crown of his own that Morgan had insisted he wear. They lay side by side on the lawn, watching the sky shift colors, and Morgan had grown quiet in the way that meant she was either thinking very hard or about to fall asleep.
"Peter?"
"Yeah, Morgs?"
"How come you always know when Mom's coming before the rest of us?"
Peter blinked. "Spider-senses."
"Can you hear my heartbeat too?"
"Yep."
"What does it sound like?"
Peter thought for a moment, then tapped a quick, light rhythm on Morgan's arm with his fingertips. She giggled at the sensation and swatted his hand away.
"That's fast."
"You're a fast kid."
Morgan seemed satisfied with that answer and turned her attention back to the sky, where the first faint stars were beginning to blink into existence. Peter watched them too, but his mind was somewhere else entirely.
He thought about MJ.
Not in the sharp, gutting way that it hit him in the first few weeks, when every brown-haired girl on the subway made his chest seize up, and every coffee shop smelled like the one where she used to read during her shifts. It was softer now, a dull ache that lived somewhere behind his ribs and surfaced at odd, quiet moments like this one.
She didn't remember him. None of them did. That was the deal, the price of keeping everyone safe, and Peter would pay it again in a heartbeat. But sometimes, late at night when the lake house was wrapped in that impossible silence, Peter wondered what MJ's heartbeat sounded like now. Whether it still did that little skip when she laughed, the one she didn't know he could hear.
He'd seen her once, three months ago, through the window of a bookstore in the Village. She'd been reading, a battered paperback balanced in one hand and a coffee in the other, and she'd looked so completely, perfectly herself that Peter had to grip the lamppost beside him to keep from walking in.
He didn't walk in.
The screen door banged open, and Tony appeared on the porch, wiping engine grease on a rag that was already more grease than fabric. His prosthetic arm caught the last of the sunlight as he raised it to shade his eyes and survey the yard.
"Alright, you two, Pepper says dinner's in ten. And Pete, she also says if you're wearing that crown to the table, she's taking a photo."
"I'm keeping the crown," Peter said without hesitation.
"That's the spirit." Tony tossed the rag over his shoulder and started down the porch steps. His gait was slower than it used to be, a slight hitch in his left leg from nerve damage that no amount of Wakandan technology had fully repaired, but he moved with the easy confidence of a man who had made peace with his scars.
He stopped beside Peter and Morgan, hands in his pockets, and looked out over the lake.
"You look beautiful today, Pepper," Peter said suddenly, without looking up from the sky.
From somewhere inside the house, Pepper called back, "Thank you, sweetie! Wait, you didn't even look."
Peter grinned and replied, "No, but Tony's heart rate just went up twelve beats per minute, so I figured you must have walked into the kitchen."
There was a beat of absolute silence.
Then, from the porch, the unmistakable sound of Tony choking on whatever he'd been drinking.
Morgan sat up with a delighted shriek. "Daddy's heart goes fast for Mommy?"
"Like a racehorse," Peter confirmed, thoroughly enjoying himself.
Tony, now wiping coffee from his shirt, pointed a warning finger at Peter. "You are a menace. An absolute menace. I take back the adoption."
"Too late. Papers are signed. I checked with your lawyers."
"I'll unsign them."
"That's not how law works, Tony."
Tony opened his mouth, closed it, then turned to retreat inside with as much dignity as a man wearing coffee could muster. From the kitchen, Peter could hear Pepper laughing, a bright, warm sound that carried through the open windows and across the lawn.
Peter lay back on the grass and closed his eyes.
The heartbeats of the house settled around him like a blanket. Tony's was still slightly elevated as he tried to defend himself to a thoroughly amused Pepper. Morgan's, quick and hummingbird-light as she scrambled up to go join the commotion. Happy's, steady and unbothered, from somewhere near the television. And his own, right there in the center of all of them, beating in time with a family he never expected to have.
It wasn't the family he was born into. It wasn't May's apartment with the creaky radiator and the Thai place on the corner. It wasn't study sessions with Ned or MJ stealing his French fries while pretending she didn't want any. It was different, rebuilt from the wreckage of sacrifice and loss and second chances, and it was his.
Peter opened his eyes. The first stars were sharp and bright above the lake, and somewhere inside, Morgan was demanding that Tony admit his heart went fast for Mommy because that was, and Peter was quoting here, "the most romantic thing ever."
He reached for his phone, opened a blank text message, and stared at the cursor blinking against the empty white field. He'd had MJ's new number for two months. Found it by accident, or maybe on purpose, it was hard to tell with spider-luck. He hadn't used it. Didn't know if he ever would.
How I love the way the room smells, once you've passed through.
The lyric drifted through his mind, unbidden, from a song he'd heard on the radio last week. He hadn't been able to get it out of his head since.
Peter locked the phone, slipped it back into his pocket, and stood up to go inside for dinner. The ache behind his ribs was still there, quiet and patient, but the laughter spilling out of the lake house was louder.
For now, that was enough.