Pita

01

After breakfast, Peter made himself a plan: by the end of today, Jean was going to know who he was.

Attempt number one came at ten in the morning. Jean had gone to her morning training session and left her phone charging by the bed. Peter jumped up and poked the screen awake with his nose. The lock screen was a Queens sunset, a band of orange-red sky pressed down behind water towers and antennas. The angle looked familiar, like it had been taken from the roof of some apartment building.

He didn’t have time to think about it. A line of text popped up in the middle of the screen: Use Face ID to unlock.

The phone buzzed twice under his nose: Face not recognized.

“Woof.” (Yeah, obviously.)

Attempt number two came at ten-oh-five. There was a closed laptop on the desk. Peter pushed off with his back legs and stood up, front paws hooked over the edge of the desk, chin just barely reaching the top. He nosed the screen open. It lit up, a password box right in the middle.

He stared at the blinking cursor, thought for a second, and poked in Jean’s birthday with the tip of his nose.

Incorrect password.

Peter was a little surprised. He remembered clearly: the year she stayed with him, she’d spent her birthday at his place. He had staked out the bakery around the corner for half the day to get a cake on sale, and he’d still stuck the candle in crooked. She’d looked at that crooked candle and said, “Silly spider, how can you not even put a candle in straight?” Then she laughed and blew it out.

Not her birthday. Then what? He hesitated, then poked it in one key at a time.

spiderman

Incorrect password.

He tried again, this time with a capital S.

Incorrect password.

He hesitated for a long time. Finally, he typed in his own name. When he was done, he could feel his ears burning.

Incorrect password. Account locked. Try again in 30 minutes.

Peter nosed the screen shut, slid his front paws down off the desk, went back to his nest, and buried his face in the blanket.

Attempt number three came that evening.

In the afternoon, Jean had made a trip into town and come back with a huge bag of dog food, a stainless-steel bowl, and a red collar with a little blue bell on it. When she put the collar on him, Peter wanted to protest, but her fingers fumbling with the buckle at the back of his neck tickled so much that the protest turned into an embarrassing whine before it ever got out.

After dinner, Jean went to take a shower. The second the bathroom door shut, Peter got to work.

He flipped the bowl over with one shove of his nose, and kibble scattered all over the floor. He started picking it up one piece at a time and laying it out one piece at a time, putting real effort into every stroke. It had been ages since his last artistic project, and this one had to deliver.

Twenty minutes later, the water shut off. In the middle of the floor lay five wobbly letters: PETER.

Peter backed up two steps, sat, and admired his work. It was the first time his own name had ever looked this good to him.

The bathroom door opened. Jean came out, hair still dripping. She flicked off the overhead light as she went, leaving only the small lamp by the bed, toweling her hair as she walked toward the bed.

Peter saw the problem.

“Woof! Woof woof!” (Wait! Look at the floor! Look at the floor!)

Crunch.

Jean stopped, lifted her bare foot, looked at the bottom of it, then looked at the pile of crushed kibble on the floor, which no longer had any shape at all.

“…Did you dump out all your food?”

Peter: …

Jean sighed, got the broom and dustpan, and in three quick swipes swept twenty minutes of his hard work into the trash. Then she poured some fresh kibble into the bowl and set it in front of him.

“Eat first, play later,” she said.

Peter looked at the bowl of kibble and started to wonder whether a dog could die of a broken heart.

02

Jean didn’t get into bed.

She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the nest with her back against the bed frame and checked the found-dog post on her phone. A whole day, zero replies.

“Nobody wants you,” she told Peter. Her voice was flat, like she was stating something she’d known for a long time.

Peter: Woof! (I know.)

“Kind of like me.” She gave a little self-mocking smile and set her phone face down on the floor.

Peter looked up at her. The lamp lit her from the side, half her face warm and golden, the other half in shadow. He wanted to argue, wanted to say anything at all, and in the end all he could do was rest his chin on her knee.

Jean looked down at the fuzzy head on her knee and gave his ear a squeeze.

“You need a name,” she said, and thought about it for a while.

“Dart?” Jean mused. “Sounds like the kind of name that comes with a toothless owner.”

Peter rolled his eyes.

Jean blinked, then narrowed her eyes. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

Peter: Woof. (Yes.)

“Dogs can roll their eyes?”

Peter: Whine. (Apparently.)

“Then how about Max? Dustin? Steve?”

With every name, Peter turned his head a little farther away. By Steve, he had turned all the way around and had his back to her.

“You’re picky,” Jean said.

She stared at the back of his head and suddenly let out a soft laugh.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Pita!”

Peter turned back around and tilted his head.

“P-I-T-A.” Jean tapped the letters out on his forehead one at a time. “Pain in the ass. A total nuisance.” She tapped his nose once more. “Just like him.”

Peter: Woof? (Like who?)

Peter: Whine… (…Oh.)

“Great,” Jean said. “You agree.”

“Woof woof woof!” (Formal protest!)

“Strongly agree. Got it.”

She reached out and pulled the whole dog into her arms. Twenty kilos of dog landed in her lap, and she didn’t seem to mind the weight at all. She rested her chin on top of his head and rocked him a little.

“Pita,” she said softly, trying the name out. “Pi… ta.”

Peter curled up in her arms and listened to her stretch the name out, and decided not to protest. For now.

03

“His name is Peter.”

Jean paused right after she said it. “…Never mind. You wouldn’t know him anyway.”

But she kept going.

“When we met, I was doing something really, really bad.” Her fingers combed through the fur on his back, stroke after stroke. “I was looking for my sister. To find her, I got into a lot of people’s heads and used their hands to do a lot of… not-great things.”

“I could get into anyone in New York I wanted.” She paused. “Except him.”

Of course Peter remembered.

“He was the first person I couldn’t get into. I don’t know what came over me, I just…” Jean’s voice dropped. “I borrowed someone he really cared about, and used her to kiss him.”

…

“He called me a monster,” Jean said. “He was right.”

That rooftop was still fresh in Peter’s memory. When MJ’s face leaned in, he’d felt one second of pure joy. Then the way MJ talked slipped, and his blood ran cold, and what came after was so much anger and hurt that his vision went dark. Only later did he understand that whoever was hiding behind MJ’s eyes was every bit as lonely as he was.

“Later he helped the bad guys catch me, and they locked me in a room,” Jean said. “Once I was inside, I realized it was the room where they’d kept my sister. That was where she…”

She didn’t finish that sentence.

“I wanted to kill someone so badly.” Her voice was very calm. “Every piece of glass in that room was pointed at him, but I kept not doing it.” She paused again. “Thinking about it now, maybe part of me was hoping someone would stop me.”

“And then he came. He fought his way through layer after layer of everything they threw at him, walked right up to me, and opened his mind to me.”

Peter lay perfectly still in her arms.

He remembered that moment. He’d been standing in the middle of the wreckage, a girl with desperate eyes in front of him. He hadn’t known what to show her. In the end, what he showed her was that one afternoon: fifteen-year-old him sitting on his narrow bed, Aunt May sitting beside him, having just found out his biggest secret.

“It was his room,” Jean said. “He was maybe fifteen, and somehow he looked exactly the same as he does now.”

Peter: Woof! (That’s because I look young NOW!)

“His aunt was sitting on the edge of the bed. She’d just found out he was Spider-Man, and she didn’t yell at him.” Jean’s voice had gone a little hoarse. “And then it turned into her talking to me. She looked at me so gently and told me I was beautiful. Like I was her niece all along.”

The room was very quiet, except for the little bell on his collar, which rang now and then as Peter breathed.

“Later I found out she was already gone,” Jean said. “He lost someone too, just like me. And he still shared half of his Aunt May with me.”

“After that, Frank shot at me, and he got in front of the bullet.” She bent her head and buried her face in the fur on Peter’s back, her voice muffled. “I watched him bleed and bleed, and I completely panicked. All I could think about was keeping him here.”

“At first I didn’t know how to save him. Then I thought, if I possessed him, maybe he wouldn’t feel the pain. I tried, and it worked. I could breathe for him, keep his heart going… it just hurt a lot.”

It was a long time before she lifted her head and sniffled.

It was the first time Peter had heard the whole story of how this “voodoo magic” had brought him back. He’d known Jean had helped a lot. He hadn’t known she’d been in pain for him for an entire day and night.

“And then,” she said, changing gears, “he went right back to being a giant headache.”

Peter: Woof? (…Excuse me?)

“He always takes forever to text back! The second he goes out on patrol, he forgets his phone exists, and by the time he remembers, it’s the middle of the night.” Jean started counting off his crimes. “Every time he goes out he says ‘don’t worry,’ and every time he comes back he has a few new injuries. Cracked ribs, and he still goes out. His stitches aren’t even out yet, and he’s swinging around again. Ask him about it and he just says ‘it’s fine, it’s nothing.’” She glared at Peter, as though this was somehow also his fault. “Does he think that as long as the city is okay, nothing that happens to him matters?”

Peter: Aroo… (To a certain extent…)

“He lives on takeout and protein powder, and he only ever orders Little Caesars. Is he even a real New Yorker?”

Peter: Whine… (Little Caesars is sponsoring this is fine…)

“That grumpy old man on the news trashes him like that, and he just laughs and says haters are fans too?!”

She took two deep breaths to calm herself down.

“He’s an idiot,” she said quietly. “…An idiot who’s unfairly good.”

Peter buried his head in the crook of her arm. He didn’t know if a dog’s face could blush. If it could, his would be bright red.

04

“Last summer,” Jean said, “he was all over the news.”

Peter’s ear twitched.

“Him and a woman. Black leather, white hair, steals jewelry.” Jean’s voice was suspiciously flat. “On rooftops. On top of the Empire State Building. For a while there, every morning when I opened my phone, there were new pictures of the two of them.”

She paused.

“That indecent cat!”

Peter: Whine (…)

Even now, Peter couldn’t really explain what had happened that summer. All he remembered was that he’d been exhausted and lonely, Jean had left to go to school, and the city hadn’t exactly been friendly to him either. Black Cat was dangerous and funny, and she never asked him questions he’d have to explain.

We didn’t…

Okay, maybe a little. Seriously, just a tiny bit.

“I have no right to be mad,” Jean said. “It’s not like he’s mine.”

Her hand went still on his back.

“Scott was really good to me back then. He’d knock on my door at five-thirty to take me running. He remembered which brand of oat milk I drink. He wasn’t the type to climb in through the window at three in the morning covered in injuries, or to vanish for hours after one text.”

The fur along Peter’s back stood up again. The oat milk, the running, last summer. So that was it.

“I thought maybe I should give it a try,” Jean said. “Maybe then I’d stop checking the news every morning.”

“But we didn’t make it to the end of the summer.”

She looked down at Peter.

“I knew sooner or later he’d ask if I wanted to come into his mind and look around. He’s exactly the type to ask something like that, very seriously.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “I broke up with him before he could.”

“I’m not ready for a second mind to open itself up to me.”

Peter went still in her arms.

“So I’m the one who dumped him,” Jean said. “And he’s still really nice to me. Which only makes it worse.”

She stopped talking. After a while she picked up her phone, and the screen lit up on that same chat window.

“He said he’s with friends this week.” She stared at the screen and frowned. “…It’d better not be that kitty-cat friend of his.”

Peter: Woof! Woof woof! Woof woof woof! (No! Not her! Not anybody!)

“It’d better not be.” She bit her lip, stared at the screen for a long while, then suddenly held the phone up in front of Peter. “Okay. You bark once, we wait for him to text first. You bark twice, I text him first.”

Peter stared at the chat window. His phone was shattered into a spiderweb. If she texted now, there would never be a reply. She’d wait, wait until tomorrow, wait until the day after, and then she’d start to worry.

She couldn’t send it. He took a deep breath and got ready to bark exactly once.

“Woof!”

The instant he finished, a rush of air went straight up his nose. His whole body jerked backward, and he let out an earth-shattering sneeze.

“…Two,” Jean said, looking at him. “Text first?”

Peter: Ruff! (No! The second one was a sneeze!)

Jean’s fingers hovered over the screen. She typed a few words, stopped, and deleted them one by one.

“No,” she said. “Too eager. We play it cool and let him come to us.”

Peter let out a breath. Then it hit him. Then why did you even ask me?

Later, Jean turned off the lamp, climbed into bed, and fell asleep before long. Peter went back to his nest and lay there with his eyes open, wide awake.

He’d tried all day to make her understand who he was. Now he’d changed his mind.

He still wanted her to know, but it had to happen a different way. If tomorrow morning Jean found out that the dog she’d poured her heart out to all night was Peter Parker himself, he didn’t even want to imagine what would happen. If it were him, he’d probably want to jump off the Empire State Building.

What she’d said tonight, about breathing for him, about that summer, none of it was meant to be overheard by a dog.

Seven more days. Once he changed back, he was going to stand in front of her and answer every single thing she’d said tonight himself.

A sleepy mumble came from the bed.

“Night, Pita.”

Peter rested his chin on his front paws and gave a small whine.

05

Day 2 · 5 days to go

In the morning, Peter was woken up by a very wrong feeling.

He was hugging the pillow in his nest. Or rather, his body was hugging the pillow, back legs braced against the blanket, in the middle of doing something he never wanted to remember for as long as he lived.

No no no no no!

His brain was screaming. His body wasn’t listening. It took him ten seconds to tear himself off the pillow and roll onto the floor, where he lay on his back with all four paws in the air, staring at the ceiling and panting.

It’s instinct, he told himself. This body is six months old, right at that hot-blooded age. It has nothing to do with Peter Parker personally.

On the bed, Jean rolled over and didn’t wake up.

Peter breathed a sigh of relief. Then he saw the Spider-Man pillow. It had rolled off the head of the bed and was lying on the rug half a meter away, winking at him with its crooked eye.

His butt twitched.

Don’t you dare.

His butt twitched again.

Five minutes later, Jean was woken up by a rustling sound. She sat up groggily and saw her dog hugging her Spider-Man pillow.

“Pita!”

Peter froze. The pillow slid out of his front paws.

Jean jumped out of bed, snatched up the pillow, brushed the dog hair off it, and turned it over and over to check every seam. Only after she made sure the crooked eye was still there did she let out a breath. “Do you have some kind of grudge against it?”

Peter: Whine… (I have a grudge against myself.)

Jean put the pillow on top of the wardrobe, the one spot in the room he couldn’t reach. She turned around and glared at him, then looked at the rumpled pillow in his nest, and her expression got complicated.

“…Are you, like, at that age?”

Peter buried his face in the blanket.

06

When Jean came down the stairs with Peter on his leash, a delivery guy was standing in the front hall holding two cardboard boxes, waiting for Hank to sign for them. The second Peter caught the stranger’s scent, his tail started wagging. Golden retrievers wag at everybody. He’d made his peace with that.

The next second, his body charged at the delivery guy and wrapped both front paws around the man’s leg.

Stop! STOP! This is a crime!

The delivery guy looked down at the golden retriever on his leg. The golden retriever looked up at him. Man and dog both froze.

“Pita!” Jean grabbed his collar and hauled him backward. Twenty kilos of dog went skidding, all four paws scrabbling, leaving two long streaks on the floor. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, he’s still a baby.”

“It’s fine,” the delivery guy said, without a single trace of emotion.

Bobby Drake happened to be walking by, and the apple in his hand hit the floor. He laughed so hard he doubled over and had to hold onto the banister to stay upright. “Hahahaha, Grey, your dog… your dog…”

“Shut up, Drake.”

“I’m just saying, your dog is very friendly.” Bobby wiped his eyes. He’d laughed so hard his cheeks hurt.

Hank came down the stairs and signed for the boxes. Only once the delivery guy had left did he look Peter over for a moment and push his glasses up his nose.

“This kind of behavior is very common in male dogs around six months old,” he said. “If you’re not planning to breed him, you might consider having him neutered. It’s good for both his health and his temperament.”

Peter’s ears went flat against his skull.

“Neutered,” Jean repeated.

“It’s a minor procedure, and recovery is quick,” Hank said. “I know the vet in town. I can make you an appointment.”

He had no idea how that cheap knockoff gun worked. Logically, after a change as big as switching species, there was a very good chance that changing back would put him back exactly the way he was.

But he wasn’t willing to bet on it.

Peter looked up at Jean with all the sincerity he had in his entire body.

Jean looked down at him for a while. “I’ll think about it.”

Peter: Woof! Woof! …Woof? (Think about WHAT?! Oh sure, it’s not like it affects YOU! …Wait. Does it?)

07

That afternoon, Peter decided to be a model dog.

As long as he was good enough, Jean would have no reason to take him to that vet. He stuck to her side every second. When she sat, he sat. When she stood, he stood. When they passed the row of couches in the living room, he looked straight ahead and didn’t so much as glance in the direction of a single throw pillow.

Bobby stopped them at the bottom of the stairs, holding a brand-new tennis ball.

“For you.” He crouched down and stuffed the tennis ball into Peter’s mouth. “Sorry I laughed at you this morning. Guys get it.”

Peter held the ball in his mouth and decided to forgive him halfway.

“Don’t corrupt my dog,” Jean said.

They had just turned into the hallway when Scott came walking toward them from the other end.

“Jean.” He stopped two steps away. “Hank told me Pita needs a little procedure? I’m heading into town this afternoon anyway. I can drive you both.”

The tennis ball almost fell out of Peter’s mouth.

“No need,” Jean said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Some other day works too. Just let me know when you decide, I’m free whenever,” Scott said. “It’s hard to take him by yourself.”

“I said no need.”

Peter sat at Jean’s feet and stared at Scott. Yesterday this guy had wanted to drive him to a shelter. Today he wanted to drive him to get neutered. On top of that, Peter’s brain was still replaying the whole Scott saga he’d learned about last night.

He got up, walked over to Scott, and set the soggy, chewed-up tennis ball down on Scott’s spotless leather shoe.

Scott looked down at the tennis ball. “…Thanks?”

Peter didn’t leave. He sat and waited. Scott hesitated, then bent down to pick it up, and Peter snatched the ball back before Scott’s fingers could touch it, turned around, and dropped it at Jean’s feet again.

Scott straightened up, baffled. “Is he playing with me?”

“I don’t think so,” Jean said with a shrug.

Scott gave Peter one more look, said “Let me know once you decide,” and left. Peter watched his back the entire time, until Scott disappeared around the corner.

Jean looked down at the tennis ball at her feet, then at Peter. “What was that about?”

Peter: Woof. (Marking my territory.)

The second he said it, he froze.

He was a dog. She was the person who’d taken him in. Scott was her ex. What right did he have to mark any territory?

Trying to get him neutered was, admittedly, evil (?), but he knew that what had just happened was obviously about something else entirely. Something personal.

Peter remembered what she’d said last night while she held him: “I’m not ready for a second heart to open itself up to me.” He remembered the gray hoodie, hanging all by itself at the very back of her closet.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Scott is just annoying He was jealous.

Peter felt he might need some time to come to terms with this fact.

That night, before bed, Jean picked up her phone again. Peter peeked over from his nest. On the screen was the website for the vet’s office in town.

08

Day 3 · 4 days to go

In the morning, Jean sat on the edge of the bed looking at her phone.

“Tomorrow at ten has an opening,” Jean said to herself. “Hank said recovery’s quick…”

Every hair on Peter’s body stood straight up.

Peter sprang into action.

Move one: he crawled under the bed. Or he got halfway under the bed. His head and front half fit under the frame. His back half was stuck outside, tail still sweeping back and forth across the rug.

“Pita, what are you doing?”

Peter: Ruh-roo! (Hiding! You can’t see me!)

Jean crouched down and looked at the half of a dog butt sticking out. “I can see you.”

Move two: he backed out from under the bed and started limping, holding his right front paw up like he couldn’t put it down. Jean panicked and took his paw in her hands. She checked every toe, one at a time, then squeezed the joints. She found nothing. The moment she let go, Peter kept limping, except he’d forgotten which paw he’d been limping on, so he switched to his left.

Jean narrowed her eyes. “You were limping on the right a second ago. Also, if you were hurt, wouldn’t that mean you need the vet even more?”

…Why has my brain stopped working.

Move three: while Jean was washing her face, he nosed her phone under her pillow. Jean came back and looked for five minutes before she found it under the pillow. She looked at him and didn’t say a word.

She opened the booking page again, her finger hovering over the “Confirm” button.

Peter threw himself at her, pinned her hand down with his front paws, buried his head in her lap, and shook all over.

Jean’s finger stopped. She looked down at the trembling head in her lap and kept looking for a long time.

“…Can you actually understand me?”

Peter lifted his head.

“Okay. Let’s try this one more time.” Jean set her phone aside and sat facing him. “And this time, take it seriously. One bark means you want to go. Two barks means you don’t.”

Peter took a deep breath and double-checked that there was no sign of a sneeze anywhere in his nose.

“Woof. Woof.”

Two barks, clear as day, with a deliberate pause in between so she couldn’t miss it.

Jean stared at him. He stared back, perfectly still.

After a long time, Jean sighed and set her phone face down on the bed.

“Fine.” She rubbed his head. “If you don’t want to, we won’t.”

Peter: Whine.

“But,” she said, poking his nose with one finger, “no more doing that to pillows, and no more hugging other people’s legs. Got it?”

Peter: Woof! Woof woof! (Got it! I promise!)

“You’d better keep your word, Pita.” Jean pointed two fingers at her own eyes, then at him. “I am watching you.”

Peter nodded like his life depended on it, then flopped down at her feet. He’d survived. His heart wouldn’t stop racing.

And as it raced, another thought surfaced.

She could have just booked it. He was a dog. Nobody would have blamed her. But she stopped and asked him, and then she took a dog’s answer seriously.

Peter thought about the text he’d sent her before all this happened. He’d decided, all on his own, that she didn’t need to know what he was doing, and he’d never even asked her. And she was someone who would stop and seriously ask whether a dog wanted something or not.

That warm, fuzzy feeling didn’t last long.

“Since you’re staying,” Jean said, sitting cross-legged on the rug and waving him over, “I need to test you first. Sit.”

Peter’s butt hit the floor. He sat perfectly straight.

“Shake.”

He placed his right front paw in her palm, neatly and precisely.

“Down.”

Thump. He went flat.

Jean raised an eyebrow. “So you know all of these? Then why were you playing dumb the last two days?”

Peter: Woof? (You never asked me the last two days!)

Jean laughed and ruffled his head. “Good boy.”

Then the petting started. From the top of his head to behind his ears, then from behind his ears down under his chin. When she found a certain spot, Peter’s right back leg started kicking on its own, like he was pedaling an invisible bicycle.

Stop. Spider-Man does not kick.

The leg kicked faster.

“Found it,” Jean said, laughing.

Her hand slid down toward his belly. Peter’s whole body jolted. A voice deep inside him screamed, Roll over! Let her rub your belly! An even louder voice screamed back, Peter Parker, have some dignity! You are a grown man! You are SPIDER-MAN!

He gritted his teeth and held out for three seconds.

On the fourth second, he flopped over, all four paws in the air, belly on full display.

Jean laughed so hard she doubled over, scratching him the whole time. “You have zero self-respect, you know that?”

I have no self-respect, Peter thought, staring at the ceiling. I have fallen so far.

His eyes drifted half shut in bliss, and his tongue flopped out of his mouth on its own yet again. Worst of all, he wanted to lick her hand.

No licking. Absolutely no licking.

He held out. For about five seconds.

Then he licked the back of her hand.

Jean froze, then laughed and pushed his head away. “Slobber!”

Peter buried his face in the rug.

I am taking this to my grave.