isn’t anyone trying to find me? (take me somewhere new)

Summary:

Peter-Three gets back to his timeline and finds nothing but the same raging loneliness and grief he had grown used to. Seeking to reunite with the people who made him feel alive again for the first time in years, his attempts to break the bonds of his already fragile timeline catch the attention of the TVA, who decide the best place for him is a universe with a bit more stability. Once there, Peter finds friendship, understanding… and maybe even love.

Notes:

For Str4b3rryb1tch.

Happy belated birthday/holiday season, Str4b3rryb1tch! I hope you appreciate this gift fic. It fills my O4: Secret Identity/Identity Reveal square for the Bodyslide Bingo Event (the prompt isn’t really as big a party of the fic as I wanted it to be, sadly, but unfortunately the romance angle took over for the prompt); and yes I know I’m insanely late for this to be written as part of polyship week but 1. I do what I want, and 2. this story idea was perfect for the Alt 10 Entire polycule fell for/flirt with the same person prompt so I’m just gonna go for it. 

Thanks as always to tinysugacube for her grammatical prowess, as well as to Marvin for his official seal of approval!

Chapter 1: it’s a damn cold night

“Ah, this is so cool. I always wanted brothers.”

Peter sighed as he adjusted his goggles, leaning over the machine that had been his obsession for the past three weeks. Three weeks since he returned to his own universe. Three weeks since he had gone back to being alone.

Uncle Ben was gone. Gwen was gone. Harry was gone. Aunt May was gone, too, and there wasn’t even anyone for him to fight over it—he could do a lot as Spider-Man, but one thing he couldn’t fight was cancer. These days, he split his time between his underground lab and swinging from building to building. But Spider-Man was not really a hero anymore. Not since he stopped pulling his punches. Not since he broke into Ravencroft and killed the man who had once been his best friend. Not since he had let his rage consume him and send him on a warpath.

Helping the younger Peter, saving his MJ, healing the world instead of breaking it—that had felt good. When the older Peter called him amazing… Peter had not realized how much he had needed to hear that. How much he’d needed to feel like he belonged somewhere.

When he first returned to his universe, it was with a brightened outlook and excitement. Max and Dr. Connors had both been cured. Who knew how much that would change his reality? Part of him held the hope that, with them cured, Gwen would be alive again—maybe even her father too. Perhaps Harry would not have gone insane. There were endless possibilities in the multiverse.

And yet, upon returning to his universe, he found himself back in his underground lab, with everything looking the exact same as he left it. He had no missed texts or calls; everything was in the same place, and he was once again alone. Of course, if he had given it proper thought—had not let himself get caught up in the excitement, in the feeling of belonging—he would have realized. Everyone had been sent back to different universes, different timelines. None of their branches were the same. And so yes, there were timelines where Gwen was alive, where things were better. But that was not his timeline. Here he was alone.

Perhaps not for long, though.

Wow… string theory, multidimensional reality, and matter displacement… all real?

Dr. Strange had cracked open the universe with magic, and Peter was no magician. He could not hope to do the same. But what he couldn’t accomplish with magic… with enough determination, he just might be able to do it with science. That, or die trying.

—

“Judge, we have a situation.”

B-15 looked up from her desk at Mobius, who had just burst into her office without knocking. “What’s going on, Mobius?” she asked.

“Universe-120703. It’s destabilizing.”

“Has there been another Time Ripper incident? We only just—”

“No, it’s not that. 120703 was one of the universes most strongly impacted by the 199999 incident.”

B-15 put her head in her hands. “I swear, if that doctor—”

“It’s not him. He actually sealed the fractures very well on his end. But the fractures are still raw on the other side, and Peter Parker…”

“Of course it’s him,” B-15 sighed. “Spider-Men are more annoying than Deadpools, I swear to someone. Has this one joined that Spiderverse cult yet? Which, by the way, thank you so much for not telling me that there was another multiversal agency out there.”

“Hey.” Mobius raised his hands defensively. “It’s not like I knew much more than you did for a long time. We didn’t even realize that there was an additional multiverse until Loki was able to stabilize the tree. But so far, none of those Spider-Men have crossed over to our multiverse, as far as I know.”

“Good.” B-15 let out a deep breath. “So if it’s not a cross-multiversal crash, what’s going on?” she asked.

Mobius made a face. “It’s still not good. He’s torn a hole in the fabric of his universe, I believe so that he can escape it for a different one. His primary goal seems to be to return to 199999.”

B-15 rubbed her forehead. “199999 is still too fragile right now, after the Snap and Dr. Strange’s fuckup. Are there any other universes we can send him to, so he stops making a mess?”

“As far as I can tell, we have two options. There’s 96283, which has the benefit that we would be placing him with an older, more stable Peter Parker with whom he already has a certain level of familiarity. However, that universe is also unstable, due to the 199999 disaster.”

B-15 sighed. “And the other? I don’t like the idea of placing someone that unstable into a different unstable universe.”

“Well.” Mobius scratched the back of his head. “The other option is more stable. However…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” B-15 snapped. “You cannot seriously be suggesting that we place him with—”

“Listen, I’m just saying that 10005—”

“No, no, I see your point.” B-15 made an annoyed face. “Get Parker out of 120703 before it completely implodes. I’ll call Wade myself.”

—

Wade, Logan, and Vanessa were all cuddling in bed in a state of post-coital comfort when the phone started to ring. Wade untangled himself, much to his lovers’ disappointment, to grab it from the dresser.

Vanessa squinted at the glowing electric clock on the bedside table. “It’s 3am, come back to bed.”

Logan, however, was also sitting up. “That’s the Doctor Who theme,” he grumbled. “Those assholes at the TVA don’t care about time.”

“Are you serious?” Wade gasped into the phone. “It’s not even Christmas!” He listened for a few more moments before continuing. “Yeah, yeah, yeah—I promise I’ll make sure he doesn’t break the multiverse. We’re kind of the experts on that, if you recall. Sure, sure, just give us a few hours to get things ready. Alright, see you soon!”

“You sound way too cheerful,” Logan rumbled. “What disaster are we dealing with this time?”

Wade grinned. “Let’s just say that it’s a good thing we used that sweet, sweet TVA reparations cash on a house with six bedrooms, honey badger.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve collected another stray,” Vanessa said, laughing. “We’ve only just managed to housebreak this one.” She shoved Logan to the side teasingly, and he toppled off the bed with a grunt. “Oh, shit, sorry!” None of them were quite used to her new levels of strength yet—it had only been six months since the accident which had triggered her latent mutant powers of strength and invisibility. She still occasionally broke things without meaning to, as well as randomly flickering in and out of the visible spectrum.

“It’s fine.” Logan stood and stretched. “So when they get here—you said a few hours? And who are they, anyway? Someone we know?”

“Not anyone from this universe, as far as I’m aware.” Wade yawned before climbing back into the bed. “Now come back to bed, I want more snuggles before he gets here.”

Logan did not protest when Wade yanked him in for a kiss, quickly followed by Vanessa doing the same. “Suppose it makes sense to at least try and get a bit of shut-eye,” Logan agreed.

“Yeah.” Wade yawned again. “From what B-15 was saying, Spidey’s had a rough go of it, and Peter will likely need a lot of time to adjust.”

Logan sat up suddenly, looking at Wade in shock. “Peter? Do you mean Peter Parker?”

Chapter 2: won’t somebody come take me home?

Peter wasn’t sure what he expected when he stepped through the portal into a new reality, but a ’50s retro office was not it.

“Hello, Mr. Parker. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but…” The man trailed off, and Peter simply blinked in surprise.

“I’m sorry, who are you? Where am I?”

“My name is Mobius, and you are in the offices of the Time Variance Authority. Walk with me.”

“What is the Time Variance Authority? Why did you bring me here?”

“Would you like some pie, Mr. Parker?” Mobius asked. Peter looked around, realizing that he had been brought to a cafeteria that had walls full of key lime pie. His stomach grumbled; he hadn’t realized just how hungry he was.

“Uh, sure?” Taking a slice of pie, he set down the briefcase he was holding on the floor. It contained his most precious worldly possessions: photos of his family and Gwen, his suit, his laptop, his phone, a small plushie that had belonged to Gwen, and a bit of cash. Everything else had been left behind; he was not exactly planning on going back.

“Mr. Parker, you’ve caused a bit of a mess for us here,” Mobius told him before taking a bite of pie.

Peter, who had been raising a forkful up to his own mouth, paused, putting the fork back down on the plate. “I’m sorry?”

“Tell that to your universe.” Mobius shook his head, taking out a device that looked a little too big and bulky to be a phone but small for a tablet. “Take a look.”

Peter looked at the screen and saw—well, he didn’t know exactly what he was seeing, but the graph was… messy, and there were several warning graphics overlaid. “What is this?”

“This represents the extreme damage you did to the fabric of your universe and the multiverse as a whole. If we hadn’t stepped in, your entire universe would have been destroyed,” Mobius told him bluntly. “Are you going to eat that?”

Peter had now fully abandoned any thoughts of eating the pie, and he simply pushed the pie across the table. “I didn’t— I never—”

“You know, there was a Variant who came in through here once. He said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said something to the effect of ‘no one good is entirely good, and no one bad is entirely bad.’ And, Peter—” Mobius took another bit of the pie, evaluating the paleness of Peter’s face. “I don’t think you’re entirely good or bad. You’re human. And you’ve been alone for a long time. But you don’t have to be alone anymore.”

“I… are you going to arrest me or…?”

“We don’t really do that kind of thing anymore.” Mobius shrugged. There was quiet, apart from the sound of Mobius’ chewing. “No, it used to be that we would just prune Variants and destroy the universes ourselves.”

“…oh.”

“But that’s not the way that the boss wants to do things anymore, and I agree. So, instead, I thought you could maybe spend some time with a few friends of mine.”

“Friends? Like here in the… where is this place anyway?”

“Not anywhere, really.” Mobius shrugged again. “We exist outside the bounds of time and space. But the people I’m thinking of live on a linear timeline, just a different one from yours. Not sure yet how well you’ll get along; but their universe is stable enough that you should be more or less safe, and they’ve got a spare guest room.”

“Wait, if you can travel universes… does that mean I could see the other Peters?” Peter asked hopefully. “I just want to make sure they’re okay.”

Mobius sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that at the moment. The multiverse is incredibly sensitive right now, especially after what you did to your universe. But I can assure you that both Peters are fine and have healed from their injuries. I’m sure we can arrange for you to see them again, though it may be in the distant future—we just need to give the multiverse a bit longer to heal.”

“That’s, um—thank you, Mobius. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Mobius said. “Now, let’s take you to meet your new roommates.”

“I am forty years old,” Peter sighed. “I’m not a kid.”

“I was in my 50s when I started existing outside of time and space, and the equivalent of hundreds of years has happened since then. Trust me”—Mobius clapped Peter on the back—“everyone becomes a kid once you’ve been alive for that long.”

—

“So, you knew another me?” Peter asked Logan, pushing his dinner around on his plate.

“Yep,” Logan replied, averting his eyes.

“What was he like?” Peter asked curiously. “Did he have my face?”

“Have your face?” Vanessa raised her eyebrow.

“Not all Variants look the same, you know,” Wade pointed out. “Have I told you about the Cavillrine?”

“He had a similar face.” Logan hummed. “But his hair was lighter. Not exactly like you.”

“Ah.” Peter wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to say to that. He didn’t even really know why he had asked. Everyone here was new to him. The universe was…well, it was a different universe. He didn’t exist here. Neither did Oscorp, Harry, Gwen. No MJ or Ned or whatever Peter-One’s Avengers were. It was…it was the opportunity for a clean slate: something he had wanted but, now that he had it, wasn’t quite sure what to do with. But he wanted to try. It was all he could do, really.

“So,” Wade began, breaking the silence that had developed between the four of them. “You killed your Goblin, right? Like, you never got your third movie, but based on your general aura in this fic and what you said during No Way Home, I’m guessing he’s dead by your hands.”

Logan shot Wade a warning look, and Vanessa kicked him under the table.

“Hey!” Wade protested, moving his leg out of range. “It’s relevant bonding material! I’ve murdered plenty of people in my time, especially after Vanessa died, and Logan killed a bunch of bad and not-so-bad guys too after his X-Men got—” Wade made a slicing motion across his throat before pausing as he seemed to realize what he was doing. “Too soon? Is it too soon? It’s been over a year since the movie came out, is that still too soon?”

“Wade.” The note of warning in Vanessa’s voice made even Peter’s spidey-sense tingle.

Still, Peter found himself looking at Logan differently. Wade was…Wade. He treated everything as a joke, used humor and outrageous behavior to hide his vulnerability. Logan, though…he was older than Peter—not just in years, but also in the weight he carried. There was something familiar in the set of his jaw, in how he held himself like a man expecting the next blow—even in the safety of his own home and his own family, albeit with Peter tagging along.

“It’s okay,” Peter said quietly, realizing that he didn’t need to answer but still wanted to. “Wade’s not wrong. I did kill him. My best friend.” The words came out easier than he would have expected. Maybe because none of them knew Harry, didn’t know how he had been the only friend there for him, supported him in his transition—and hadn’t witnessed the fractures that had come between them, the way that Harry had killed the only other person Peter loved, out of rage and jealousy, pain, and madness. “I broke into the Ravencroft Institute, and I—”

His throat tightened. It wasn’t easy after all.

Logan set down his fork. “How long?”

“What?” Peter asked, startled.

“How long did it take, after they died. How long before you stopped pulling your punches? Before the rage took over.”

The question hit Peter harder than he could have expected. No one had ever asked him that—no one would have had the opportunity, even, aside perhaps from the other Peters, the first people he had let in even a little bit since he had lost May to the cancer. The other Peters had been kind and understanding, the first family he had had in a long time. But they hadn’t pressed—truly, the whole experience was so relatively brief that there had been no time. The armor he had built around himself had remained intact until Logan had just sliced through it.

“A year,” he admitted with a small shrug. “Maybe a little less. At first I told myself—little lies, you know? Rationalizing that I was just being more efficient. Criminals were getting smarter, weapons were getting deadlier—I had to adapt.” He laughed bitterly. “Once May was gone too… I refused to admit it to myself, and there was no one else to call me on the fact that it was all bullshit. I wanted them to hurt. I wanted them to feel what I felt.”

Logan nodded slowly. Not with approval—with recognition. Wade and Vanessa stayed silent, respectful of the moment in a way that not many realized Wade was capable of.

“I spent…probably about a decade hunting them,” Logan said steadily, not breaking eye contact with Peter. “I hunted down every one of them who had a hand in it. The scientists, the soldiers, the men in suits who gave the orders, and everyone who supported them. It was really only the children I let go. I told myself that it was justice, that I was making sure no one else would suffer—and, in the process, I created hundreds of orphans.” His eyes were distant now, looking beyond Peter at something the rest of them couldn’t see. “By the end, I couldn’t remember their faces anymore—their voices, my memories of the people who I was supposedly doing all this for, were washed away. All I had left was the killing.”

Vanessa reached across the table and took Logan’s hand. He didn’t pull away; but when his eyes refocused, he did not look at her, gaze fixed on Peter. “How many?” Logan asked. “How many did you kill?”

Peter thought about the list he’d kept: the people whose deaths he had actively planned for, had premeditated, had murdered because he didn’t believe they deserved to live after what they’d done. “I don’t know.” His voice was almost a whisper. “I stopped keeping track in the high thirties. Some of them…at the time I thought most of them deserved it. Now I’m realizing that most of them were just—in the way. Working for the wrong people, being in the wrong place when I lost control.”

Wade was, for once, completely silent. This was a particularly angsty part of the fic, and his humor would have destroyed a lot of the tension of the scene.

“The worst part—for me, at least—isn’t the guilt, right?” Logan sighed. “It isn’t the nightmares. It’s realizing that for a while, for a long while, I didn’t care. The part of me that felt bad… it felt bad because I knew that I should feel bad, but underneath it all was the cold satisfaction. The voice that said they deserved it. That I was doing what needed to be done. It’s the same for you, isn’t it?” Vanessa squeezed Logan’s hand, and he squeezed hers back, but his eyes still never left Peter’s.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Peter answered, his throat raw and eyes burning as he blinked rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall. “How do I—how do I make it stop?”

“You don’t.” Logan shrugged—not casually, because there was nothing casual about any of their situations. It was instead the shrug of a man who had made peace with an uncomfortable truth. “You learn to live with it, though. You find people who remind you of who you were before. You take a few steps forward, even more back; but eventually you find those people who also accept you as you are now.” He glanced over at Wade and Vanessa, and his eyes softened. “And you realize you have something worth protecting. Worth being better for.”

Wade cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the weight of the conversation and pushing past the author’s need to dwell on angst. “For the record, I’ve killed more people than the Spanish flu, and I’m doing great. Therapy helps. Also orgasms. Highly recommend those.”

Vanessa snorted, and Logan rolled his eyes. Despite everything, Peter still felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “Noted.”

—

Later, after dinner was cleared and Wade had dragged Vanessa off to “test the structural integrity of the bed in the guest room” (earning a slap on the arm and a wink from her), Peter settled himself on the back porch, looking up at a sky he’d never seen before, the stars in wholly unfamiliar constellations.

The door slid open behind him; Logan stepped outside with a beer in one hand and a glass of water in the other. He sat down in the nearest porch chair, offering the glass to Peter before popping open the beer for himself.

“Thanks,” Peter said as he wrapped his hands around the cool glass. “You don’t have to babysit me. I won’t run off or anything, especially not in a brand-new universe.”

“I know,” Logan replied simply, leaning back and staring out at the yard. “I’m not here to babysit. But I don’t sleep much, and I don’t expect you do, either. It’s easier to not sleep with company.”

Peter huffed a quiet laugh. “You’re not wrong.”

They stood in silence for a while, but it was a comfortable one, the sounds of civilization distant. “The stars here are different, right?” Logan said eventually.

“Among many differences, yeah,” Peter admitted. “It’s not exactly surprising that the stars are just another thing unlike home. But that’s the multiverse for you, right?”

“Right,” Logaan agreed, and they fell into silence once more. “Wade told me about your other adventures in the multiverse. A lot of what he says is bullshit.” Logan snorted. “But based on the fact that you’re actually here, I wouldn’t be surprised if what he said was true.”

“What did he tell you, then?” Peter asked.

“You met your other selves, including one much younger than you. You talked him down, told him about what happens when the hate takes you over, how that makes you more dangerous than you ever want to be.” Logan paused to take a long pull from his beer, and Peter stayed quiet, unsure exactly of where this was going. “That takes guts, bub. Being able to admit you were wrong. Being able to stop someone else from making the same mistakes.”

Peter stared into his water. “I didn’t feel brave or anything like that. I just felt like a hypocrite.”

“We’re all hypocrites, Pete.” Logan took another pull. “But it helps when you have people to remind you that you’re still here, and that the fact that you’re still here is a good thing.” Logan glanced toward the house, where the sound of Wade and Vanessa’s muffled giggling was filtering through the walls.

Peter followed his gaze and, through the window, saw Wade and Vanessa together on the couch, the structural integrity of which they seemed to be testing as well. He looked away from the window, face warming. “I don’t have anyone like that, though.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, bub. You’ve got us now. If you end up hating us and wanting to leave, I’m sure the TVA could help you find another home. But if you do want to stay with us… this can be your home too, if you let it.”

Chapter 3: maybe i’m just out of my mind

Adjusting to the new universe was both harder and easier than Peter could have predicted. Everyone had given him a warm welcome, and he quickly found himself in a position he had not experienced for years: someone with a family. He knew he did not deserve any of it, but that did not stop him from embracing it.

Still, it took over a month for Peter to stop flinching every time Wade unexpectedly came around a corner. Two months to stop constantly apologizing in shared spaces, to stop feeling like his presence was a burden. Three months to grow comfortable enough to feel like he was part of the family, to reveal his identity to their extended group of friends as not just Peter the multiversal refugee, but as someone with powers who could actually contribute.

Six months to realize that he was in trouble.

As was the case for many dangerous situations, it happened gradually. A brush of Vanessa’s hand when she passed him the salt. The way that Wade would flop across his lap during movie nights without anything resembling permission. Logan’s quiet “morning, bub” delivered with a steaming cup of coffee made exactly the way Peter liked it—two sugars and a splash of oat milk, because Peter had mentioned offhand once that dairy upset his stomach and Logan apparently remembered everything.

Peter had been alone for so long that he had forgotten what it felt like to be seen: not as Spider-Man, not as a hero, a killer, or a cautionary tale, but as Peter—who hummed when he cooked, got emotional during nature documentaries, and who still, at forty years old, slept with the worn teddy bear that had once belonged to Gwen.

(He had been mortified when Wade found him during a misplaced laundry incident, but Wade had simply taken one look at the bear and handed it back without comment. Two days later, Peter had found a small crocheted sweater on his pillow with a note that said: “For Mr. Snuggles, because every hero needs armor.” Peter had cried in his room for half an hour, but Wade hadn’t commented on that, either.)

The thing was—and Peter was only just beginning to admit this to himself—he had started to want things again. Things he’d locked away after Uncle Ben, after Gwen, after Harry, after Aunt May, after everything. He’d gotten a splash of it when he met the other Peters, that reinvigoration of a need to belong that had ended up with him in this universe. But he had started to yearn for other things too. Things like warmth, and touch, and the possibilities of waking up with someone who wanted him there.

The problem—the big problem that he was only beginning to grasp the scope of—was that it was not just one someone that he yearned for, but three. Three someones, who were all already part of a unit: a beautifully chaotic, deeply affectionate, and frequently terrifying unit that Peter had become adjacent to without meaning to, and in a way that felt different to anyone else in their family. Every person who had become part of his world fit together in a particular way; and Peter had come to fit, too, but in a way that felt… different.

Peter was pretty sure, for example, that all three of them flirted with him, individually and sometimes simultaneously, in a way that was different from how they interacted with Colossus or Laura or Peter or any of their other friends. But every time he started to believe it, his brain would supply a dozen reasons why he was misreading the situation.

Wade flirts with everyone, it doesn’t mean anything.

Vanessa’s just naturally affectionate, you’re not special.

Logan’s being nice because he feels sorry for you. Because you’re broken. Because—

“Hey.” Vanessa’s voice cut through his spiral. Peter closed the book he had been failing to read abruptly, looking up at her. She’d appeared in the doorway of the former guest room that had, in the past few months, truly become Peter’s. Leaning against the frame in what looked like easy grace (but he knew was actually a contained sort of control as she continued to master her powers of strength), she continued, “You’ve been hiding in here for two hours. Wade’s getting worried. Even Logan’s getting worried. And to be honest, so am I. What’s going on?”

“I’m not hiding,” Peter insisted defensively. He was definitely hiding, staring at the same page of a book for over forty-five minutes and not understanding a single word. “Just…reading.”

“Right,” Vanessa said dubiously. She crossed the room to sit on the edge of Peter’s bed, close enough that her subtle perfume filled his enhanced senses to be full of it—lavender, with a hint of vanilla. “You want to talk about it?”

“About what?” Peter averted his eyes and scratched the back of his head.

“About whatever’s been making you avoid us for the past week.”

Peter’s stomach dropped. “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

“Peter.” She gave him a look. “You literally dove behind the couch yesterday when Wade came into the room.”

“That was—I dropped something. My—the remote. I dropped the remote.”

Vanessa’s lips twitched. “The remote that was on the coffee table, in front of the couch?”

Shit. Peter winced. “I… have really good reflexes?”

“You have really terrible lying skills.” She reached out and took his hand, her fingers warm against his. “Talk to me. Please?”

Peter looked at their joined hands, at the way her thumb was tracing small circles on his knuckles. At the sincerity in her eyes where he finally drew the courage to meet them.

“I don’t want to mess things up,” he admitted softly. “You guys have something good. Something real. And I’m just—” He gestured vaguely at himself with his free hand. “A mess. With baggage. And probably some lingering multiversal radiation. I’m not exactly relationship material.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one had to. I lived it.”

“Not that I ever want to correct someone on their lived experience, but we’ve had some experiences with you, too. Experiences with the man who has spent the last three months helping organize the chaos that is Wade’s excuse for a filing system. The man who taught me how to make his aunt’s meatball recipe because I mentioned I missed my grandmother’s cooking. Who sat up all night with Logan after he had a nightmare while Wade and I were out of town and didn’t say a word about it the next day.”

Peter’s throat was tight as he managed to say, “That’s just—that’s just being a decent person.”

“That’s you being a decent person. A good man, and we’ve all noticed. We’ve seen you, Peter—the real you. And none of us ever want you to leave.”

Before Peter could respond, there was a knock on the doorframe. He looked up from where he had been staring at Vanessa’s hand linked with his own and saw Wade standing there, Logan looming behind him, both of them wearing unusually serious expressions.

“Vanessa sent a group text,” Wade explained. “Siad it was time for an intervention. But the good kind with, like, positive feelings instead of, you know, the other kinds.”

“Wade.” Logan’s voice was gentle. “Let them talk.”

“Nope.” Wade strode into the room and plopped down onto Peter’s bed on the other side, sandwiching the man between himself and Vanessa. “I’ve been patient. I’ve been so patient. I’ve made jokes and given space and pretended not to notice when Pretty Petey here got that sad look in his eyes every time he watched us be couple-y or throuple-y. But I’m done with being patient.”

“Wade—” Peter started.

“No. My turn.” Wade looked into Peter’s eyes, and for once there was no mask, no jokes, no deflection. Just a man making raw and vulnerable eye contact. “I know what it’s like to think you’re too broken to be loved, to watch other people have something you want and convince yourself that you don’t deserve it. But here’s the thing, Petey: You do deserve it. You deserve all of it. The good mornings, and the bad nights, and the Tuesdays where nothing happens except you get to exist next to people who genuinely give a shit about you.”

Peter’s eyes were burning. “I don’t—”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Logan moved to stand behind Vanessa, one hand on her shoulder. “Just listen. Because we’ve been dancing around this for months, and I’m too old for dancing.” Logan’s lip twitched. “And, for the record, Wade and I made a closed circuit with a Time Ripper—so if anyone is drenched in multiversal radiation, it’s us.”

Vanessa squeezed Peter’s hand. “What we’re trying to say is—we want you. All of us. Not as a guest, as a roommate, but as ours. If you want that, too.”

Peter’s brain had short circuited. He looked at Vanessa, whose eyes were full of hope; at Wade, who was biting his lip nervously; and at Logan, whose stoic expression was doing nothing to hide the vulnerability in his eyes. “You mean—” Peter’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “All of us? Together? Like…”

“We’re inviting you into the polycule, yeah.” Wade took Peter’s other hand in his own, his tone softer than usual. “We’ve talked about this pretty extensively. Multiple conversations, many of them even with clothes on. Vanessa’s been pushing it for months. Logan took some convincing because he wasn’t sure you would even want us, but he came around when I pointed out that you’re basically a younger, less hairy version of him with a slightly larger capacity for emotional availability.”

“Wade,” Logan said in warning.

“What? It’s true. You both have a very similar brooding thing going on, it’s adorable.”

Peter let out a hysterical, slightly wet, giggle. “This is—I don’t—are you serious?”

“We are,” Vanessa said simply, lifting their joined hands and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “We love you, Peter—not despite the broken parts. We love all of you, the whole package.”

“We don’t expect you to give us an answer right now,” Logan added. “You can take whatever time you need. And if your answer is ‘no,’ that’s okay too. You’ll always have a home here regardless. But we wanted you to know… to stop wondering.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Peter admitted quietly. He looked at his hands intertwined with Vanessa’s and Wade’s, Vanessa’s thumb still rubbing gentle circles. “I’ve never—Gwen was it, for me. For what feels like my whole life, she was it, and only Harry ever came close. And after she died, after I killed him… I thought that part of me was dead, too. I didn’t think I could feel this way again. About anyone.”

“You don’t have to know how.” Vanessa had flipped his hand over at some point, her thumb now smoothing gentle circles on his palm. “We’ll figure it out together.”

Peter looked at them—his insane, chaotic, wonderful maybe-partners. At the future stretching out in front of him, uncertain but no longer empty. At the possibility of love again, different from before but no less real.

“Yeah,” he said softly, his voice feeling steady for the first time during the entire conversation. “I think I’d like that.”

“Excellent!” Wade declared. “Now that that’s settled—who wants to test the structural integrity of this bed? Not for sex, mind, I’m actually tired for once, but because I’ve been craving a group nap.”

Vanessa snorted, even as she shifted properly onto the bed and pressed in closer to Peter, with Logan also climbing in behind her. “Your group naps always turn into something else. Let’s not do anything Peter isn’t ready for.”

“I think I’d be okay with a group nap.” Peter’s cheeks grew slightly pink. “Even if it turned into something else.”

The group nap did, in fact, turn into something else. Not immediately—they actually dozed together for a solid two hours, a pile of limbs and blankets and Wade’s truly impressive snoring. But when Peter woke to Vanessa’s lips trailing softly along his jaw, with Logan’s hand resting on his hip and Wade’s erection pressing into his back, he found he did not mind the transition. He only shifted slightly so that his lips met Vanessa’s and adjusted Logan’s hand so that it would slip under his shirt.

“Is this okay?” Vanessa murmured as their lips parted, though they stayed pressed against one another. “We can stop. We don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Peter interrupted her. “If you want to. It’s more than okay, I just—” He swallowed. “It’s been a long time. And I’ve never—with more than one person at a time, I mean.”

“Neither have we. Not like this, with you,” Logan rumbled.

“Which means we get to figure it out together.” Wade’s voice was soft as it tickled Peter’s ear, and Peter carefully pressed back against him.

“Together.” Peter hummed. “Sounds perfect.”

Later, when they were all tangled in the bed (which had both proved its structural integrity and that it was just a little too small for four people), Peter felt something he hadn’t felt in years. Not happiness—that was too simple; or peace—that was too quiet. It was belonging: the knowledge that he was exactly where he was supposed to be, with exactly who he was supposed to be with.