Chapter Text
When Jess told Miguel she had a job offer for him that he was going to absolutely hate to hell and back but that he needed desperately for the sake of his sanity even more than his bank account, lest he went criminally insane and tried to murder someone, she had been right.
He does, in fact, hate it.
He also does need it but that’s beside the point.
It’s not the kid’s fault; little Mayday B. Parker is the sweetest, most adorable, least annoying child Miguel has ever crossed paths with. No, Mayday is a good kid, all bright eyes and unruly ginger curls that take forever to tame because she won’t stop wiggling, and unending commentary and questions made up of a vocabulary that consists mostly of her own made-up sounds and about fifty-six random, unrelated words. Sure, she makes Miguel re-baby-proof the house at least twice a week because the little shit keeps figuring out ways to break the child locks and gnaw off padded corners, and because of her he now knows the names and backstories of all the My Little Ponies, but even so, babysitting her is vastly preferable to, say, spiralling depression and self-loathing.
And her smile looks just like Gabi’s.
The problem isn’t with the kid he has to babysit nine hours a day, five and a half days a week, possibly till she goes off to college. It’s not that he’s making a mere fraction of the income he used to not two months ago, he’s not bitter at all, oh no. It’s not even the fact that the job is the sort typically reserved for teenagers looking for new ground to hook up with their flings without their parents knowing.
The problem is the dad.
Peter B. Parker can be described succinctly in one word: sloppy. His kitchen is a perpetual palette of grease, food, liquid, and other questionable stains that have yet to yield to Miguel’s withering glares and half-hearted attempts at cleaning. There is no inch of his house that hasn’t had unwashed laundry on it at least once. His mail occupies a consistently growing pile in a bathtub in the guest bathroom, which it shares with an even bigger pile of empty Amazon boxes. There are freakishly thick cobwebs in the most random places that keep spawning no matter how many times Miguel takes them down, even after Miguel hunted down the last tiny pathetic daddy-long-legs weeks ago. And the walls of his house are a hideous canary yellow, which doesn’t track with the sloppiness thing but it does say a lot about Peter’s shit taste and questionable life choices overall.
And the man himself is no better.
Peter seems to subsist fully on a diet of various ungodly sugary cereals with a few drops of milk (except for the singular time Miguel saw him eat it with orange soda) that he wolfs down before kissing his daughter on the head and stumbling out the door while losing his everyday battle with his tie. Peter seems to consider raking his fingers through his mop of soft chestnut hair a few times per day enough in the way of grooming it, his five-o-clock-shadow is more of a round-the-clock shadow and always slightly uneven around his equally lopsided grin, and Miguel has yet to find any evidence of a comb not meant for a 0-to-3-year-old in the house. Peter has a stack of newspapers by the couch that are all folded open to the comic strip section, which is apparently all he reads – after coming home from work. What kind of adult doesn’t read the news, not even the shit about Spiderman that Miguel wrinkles his nose at because it’s so dramatized and borderline reality TV! He doesn’t even bother taking his chances with the crossword! And the ungodly amounts of takeout containers Miguel just so happens to notice (alright, snoops for like a creep) in his trash almost makes him break out in hives.
The only redeeming quality of Peter B. Parker is that in his obligatory fishing photo in the hallway, it’s a red-headed woman holding the three-foot trout with a smirk, while he poses like Will Smith in the picture that Miguel’s ex-students had shown him while trying to explain what memes are.
Truly, the man is a mess. Whatever Jess’s new girlfriend, MJ, used to see in him, enough to marry him, fucking beats Miguel – although to be fair, that did end in flames and divorce. Finding anything appealing about Peter B. Parker, with his soft, crow’s-footed eyes, and his messy clothes and messier hair, his slightly alarming and very public intensity of love and pride for his kid, and his dad-jokes and “vine references”, whatever those are, should be classified as a fucking Olympic sport.
Miguel hates the fact that apparently, he is a pro fucking athlete.
What his stupid traitor of a body finds attractive about Peter, Miguel cannot fathom. Sure, Peter has that bright, careless smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes, and sure, he’s surprisingly smart behind his façade of unforgivable mediocrity, and sure, he’s devastatingly hot in that scrawny, soggy subway rat sort of way. That’s no excuse for Miguel’s gut to coil up all heated-like when Peter boops his nose and tells him to lighten up, or comes back all cute and rumpled from work and effortlessly swings up Mayday in one arm when she toddles over to him with happy burbles, or, heaven forbid, thanks Miguel and tells him he did such a great job.
Un-fucking-believable. Utterly ridiculous. Miguel should be ashamed of himself. He is ashamed of himself.
And for some reason, that makes the guy even hotter.
Fucking hell.
The door unlocks with a rattling click in the hallway, and Miguel blinks once, twice, shifting his elbows off his knees as he reaches the end of his designated hateful-rumination time. He looks over at the unkempt fluff of red hair and Spiderman diaper that is Mayday, illuminated by a strip of mellow curtain-filtered sunlight, so peaceful in her afternoon nap. It’s all too easy to underestimate her while she sleeps, but Miguel won’t be fooled – he knows exactly what havoc the little menace is capable of.
“Heyyyy…” Peter whispers, his – unkempt, visibly worn – head appearing in the doorway of the nursery, followed by the rest of his body, “Daddy’s home! How’s my baby girl doing?”
It’s clearly aimed at Mayday. Clearly. Miguel huffs, levels his most critical gaze at the guy’s rolled-up sleeves and mismatched Sailor Moon/Shrek socks.
The guy is a high school physics teacher, for fuck’s sake. Not even AP physics – just physics. His wife left him after a decade of marriage, and they’re disappointingly boring and functional and friendly about it. His greatest joy in life is introducing his kid to the bloody Looney Tunes, and racing her around in supermarket trolleys and almost giving Miguel a heart attack the one time he went with them.
None of this is attractive.
“Man, you gotta teach me how you put her down for her naps, Miggy, it’s magic. You, sir, are a wizard of some sort,” a dull flash of a grin, bony hand raking awkwardly through shaggy hair, “You are so flippin’ good.”
Flippin’. Este pendejo.
“No es nada.” Miguel shrugs, clipped. He treads lightly out into the hall, and keeps his face neutral as he looks at Peter – he’s shorter than him, which satisfies Miguel more than it should. It’s a petty, pathetic victory, but it’s all he has. “There’s some apple slices in the fridge she’s supposed to eat when she wakes up because we had a deal involving yard squirrels and Sonic the Hedgehog, make sure she eats them. Oh, and you should probably pick up some diapers tomorrow so we don’t have a repeat of last time.”
They both shudder collectively at that.
“Yup, gotcha.” Peter leans against the wall with a bone-tired sigh, and still somehow has the energy to smile at him, “Thanks again, Miguel.”
The man must be really worn out not to tack on a joke about Miguel being a vampire or quoting Barney the dinosaur. In spite of being half-days where Peter can leave school at 12:30 PM and be home by 1, Saturdays seem to tire him out the most.
He resists the weird urge to do something about it.
“Like I said. No es nada.” This is literally what he is paid to do, stop being fucking nice, estúpido.
It’s just a silly crush, Miguel reminds himself as he leaves, face hot because Peter had taken it upon himself to casually clap his hand on Miguel’s shoulder when he said goodbye. Just physical attraction. It will fade in… a month, max. Just give it like… another month.