Work Text:
It’s hard to miss the signs of a half-blood once you know what to look for. No matter where they
go, trouble seems to follow them. They’re hard-wired for chaos, sensing too much and with hair-trigger reactions, maybe even carrying around an official ADHD diagnosis to go with it. Once you get past the rough surface, you often find something spectacular - a special kind of mischief, beauty, athletic or academic talent, and a tenacity that’s hard to explain. And then you look at the parents behind them and you find a single mom or dad that has a little sparkle to them, too.
Yes, it’s hard to miss the signs of a half-blood, but somehow the possibility of her nephew being a half-blood never crossed May Parker’s mind.
May Reilly, daughter of Hermes, spent her childhood summers learning how to fight monsters at Camp Half-Blood. Unlike some of the other kids there, she had no desire for grand adventures or accolades; she wanted to help the world in her own way. So she learned enough to slay any monsters that came her way, decided to keep her ear to the ground but otherwise stay out of godly affairs, and fully embraced her background as the daughter of the God of Travelers by becoming a community organizer in the mortal world.
One of those weary travelers who crossed her path was the exceedingly attractive and dedicated Ben Parker, who May internally dubbed Officer Hottie. Community organizing turned into hot cups of Community Coffee shared during cold days with hot exchanges. Ben made May feel like Aphrodite had given her a thousand blessings, like Apollo pulled the sun into the sky just for them, like her heart was burning with the heat of Hephaestus’s forges.
On a nerve-wracking night, she told him about her family and her life as a half-blood. She spoke to him about the cyclops that had found her coming back from the corner store today and the celestial bronze dagger that she always kept with her. He promised that there was no monster - human or supernatural - that they would be unable to face together.
Along with the new Mr. and Mrs. Parker came the newly minted Dr. Parker. Ben’s younger brother was charming, ambitious, devastatingly smart, and with the same heart-breaker smile as Ben. Unlike Officer Hottie, Richard wasn’t interested in monogamy. It seemed like every week, May and Ben would meet Richard and some new jaw-droppingly gorgeous woman or man until one day, a few years into marriage, the Parkers met up with Richard, and instead of a new date, he was cradling a baby.
So yes, it’s hard to miss the signs of a half-blood, but maybe May could give herself a pass since it’s a little more difficult when you’re looking at your infant nephew instead of some hyperactive twelve-year-old with a huntedlook on their face. When May had first left Camp Half-Blood, every single parent had potentially had a love affair with a god, but after several years, May was used to mortal parents just being typical mortal parents, even when they were charming and sparkling. With the revolving door of partners always present on Richard’s arm, it was easy to accept his offered explanation of a fling who did not want to be involved with their child.
Richard’s death was shocking for multiple reasons. While May and Ben adored watching little Peter every time Richard went on a business trip for this mysterious new company he was working for, they had long since decided that they should not have children of their own. Their lives were on the line all the time with May’s status as a half-blood and Ben’s status as an officer with an (in May’s opinion, irresistibly sexy) unwavering moral compass, there was just too high a chance that one day they’d go off and just…not come back. Especially as a daughter of Hermes, May knew very well how that felt and did not want to ever do that to her own child.
For death to instead come for sweet, charming scientist Richard…May and Ben steeled their resolve and held tightly to both Peter and the weapons they would use to defend him. May started up email chains of half-siblings and former co-campers to arrange some adult training sessions, and Ben got to work moving cleaning supplies from under the sink, placing covers on outlets, and generally toddler-proofing Peter’s new home.
It’s hard to miss the signs of a half-blood, but even if May had been looking for them, she would have been looking for similarities to her own childhood. Life after the acquisition of Peter was chaotic but very different from the stories of home that May’s half-siblings (along with all of the unclaimed demigods in the Hermes cabin) used to tell late at night.
Peter himself was angry and messy and distractible and all of the things you’d expect from a child who had suddenly lost his only parent. With a lot of therapy and love and support, things settled down. They worked with him on coping skills and thinking before he acted out in anger, and he flourished. Peter was brilliant. As he learned to read, they learned that he had dyslexia, and May and Ben became well-versed in IEPs and PTA meetings and bake sales and gave Peter the support to tear through science documentaries and children’s encyclopedias to his heart’s content.
As Peter got bigger, life got more dangerous. Ben and May had attributed this to their extracurricular activities. As May became more active in the half-blood community, the monsters became more active, too. May used her position at FEAST to find little half-bloods and shepherd them on to camp, but with them came more monsters. She traded favors with children of Hephaestus for a weapon for Ben, who provided back up on the rare occasions that he was able to peer through the mist. And then aliens appeared in the sky - aliens who celestial bronze passed straight through, who May had to fend away with kitchen knives - and superheroes appeared, and the Parkers adjusted their expectations and kept moving forward with their lives.
When Peter did start to act out - skipping school, sneaking out, sitting at the breakfast table with the occasional bruise - it wasn’t like the typical half-blood acting out experience. It didn’t mirror the trouble that May had accidentally attracted at her age, and even with all of his misbehavior, he wasn’t defiant in the way that May and her old cabinmates had been. Ben reassured her that this was how normal teenagers were and that you could cut up and get in trouble even if you were 100% human; he and Richard surely acted out similarly when they were Peter’s age.
If you really pressed May, you might get her to admit that it was much more shocking for Ben to die in a robbery than it was for Peter to have bizarre spider powers. Early in their relationship, the Parkers had actually discussed the possibility of untimely death due to mortal actions extensively. However, as they had become more involved in the half-blood world, and this separate world of superpowered individuals started emerging, it seemed more and more likely that any untimely deaths would be at the hands of the supernatural.
Comparatively, Peter’s spider powers, while not expected, fit right into May’s life. She literally had an old flame who could shoot fire out of his fingers; her best friend at camp literally made plants sprout up from the ground when they were in a good mood. Peter had enough going on with the superhero world that May wanted to keep him away from the gods and all associated beings, so she didn’t tell him about the monsters that were appearing more and more frequently or the celestial bronze weapons that she kept with her or the training she went through when she was his age. Instead, she worked on setting up “superhero training games” of puzzles and wild acrobatics and quick reflexes to keep Peter on his toes.
And then the Battle of Manhattan happened. May had met her brother Luke a few times in his life. They weren’t close, but they got along well-enough. May understood him; even though it wasn’t something commonly spoken about, she knew they shared the same lingering resentment towards a largely absent father and a group of beings who just kept having kids that they wouldn’t take care of or love or support. She got the entire story much later, but during the battle, she joined the dozens of children who had been unfairly been conscripted into this fight - along with her entire facebook group of older half-bloods - in defending New York and Olympus. Through blood and sweat and fighting for her life, she just prayed to every god and God and any other deity she could think of that even if this whole city was torn down, her child would be okay.
But here’s the thing about godly fights - mortals don’t participate. Even if they know something is wrong and can see the destruction, they can only rarely see what is truly going on. There would be no help from Iron Man or Captain America - maybe from Thor if he wasn’t off world, but that was it. Much later as the half-blood adults and camp counselors cleaned up the mess, as she herded a few children of Ares to the FEAST center so that she could clean up their wounds and as she and her grown half-siblings pieced together the story from the kids, one of the girls mentioned Spider-Man helping them take down a Laistrygonian giant.
It’s hard to miss the signs of a half-blood. May thought for quite a while about if she had missed them anyway. Was Peter a clear-sighted human? Was this the effect of the spider bite? Was this just a teenager projecting a memory of her favorite hero to not deal with what they had just gone through?
As she walked through the door of their apartment, filthy and sweaty and bloody, she was confronted by an equally filthy and extremely confused Peter. He brushed her up and down, looking for serious injuries, while telling her that he just took part in the most bizarre fight full of other kids and mythical beings and Mr. Stark says he didn’t even see anything and asked if I’d hit my head! And then of course May did double check that he didn’t hit his head and was only satisfied when she saw no injuries herself.
It’s hard to miss the signs of a half-blood, but Peter wouldn’t really be a half-blood, would he? How much godly DNA got replaced by radioactive spider DNA? Would that just override the human DNA or would it affect both sides of a person’s genetics? The thought was dizzying; this was surely more of a question for a child of Athena than for May.
But May…May would have easily covered up any monster activity drawn by Peter as both a daughter of Hermes and someone actively involved in training with older half-bloods and getting younger half-bloods to safety. Was the uptick in monster activity because of her actions? Was it because of the build up to this battle? Was it because she lived with Peter? If it was because of Peter, why was their home so safe, never breached by monsters? (Well, until tonight if the shattered window and splintered paint in the living room was anything to go by.)
Unless…unless something about the spider bite could have disguised his scent? Something about his spider DNA being so different, so antithetical to his godly DNA? Was it really such a stretch of the imagination to imagine Richard - handsome, charming, intelligent Richard - would attract the attention of a goddess, who then dumped Peter on him?
Questions swirled in May’s head, questions mirrored by the ones spilling out of Peter’s mouth. Or maybe not, as he was looking at her expectantly. She considered her options and then finally said, “Peter, I think it would be a good summer to visit the summer camp where I spent my childhood. I feel like we’d have a really good talk with the activities director.”