Upstairs, Peter sat at the computer and started searching.
The problem he was solving was simple in concept. The Parker financial situation was not going to resolve itself, and he had no interest in waiting for a Stark internship that was years away or a Baxter position that had not been confirmed yet.
He needed money now, or at least soon, and he needed to generate it in a way that did not require him to compromise anything he was planning.
What he found when he searched the current state of the entertainment and technology markets was, in a word, bleak.
"This is complete nonsense," he said, scrolling through page after page of products that were either weapons adjacent, enhancement serum adjacent, or so aggressively derivative that they constituted an insult to the concept of innovation.
"Now I understand how the MCU Tony managed to keep Stark Industries relevant.
He looked at exactly this and saw the gap." He closed three tabs at once. "I am going to do the same thing. I am going to find the gap and walk through it."
The gap, in this case, was entertainment.
Specifically games. Specifically the kind of games that were easy to develop on existing hardware, impossible to stop playing once started, and had never existed in this universe because they had been created in his.
He had three in mind immediately.
Geometry Dash. Flappy Bird. Vector.
Simple to build. Catastrophically addictive.
He had played all three of them in his previous life to a degree that could generously be described as concerning and accurately described as a complete loss of several weekends he would never get back.
Without further thinking he got to work.
The most time-consuming part was the character design for Flappy Bird, which required more visual iteration than the other two. The rest of Saturday afternoon disappeared.
Most of Sunday morning followed it.
By the time he had three finished, tested, and functional games sitting on his desktop he had also consumed an unreasonable amount of coffee and forgotten to eat lunch on both days.
He then researched which company to approach.
Most of the options required the seller to be an adult, which was a logistical problem with a straightforward solution, specifically that he would not be mentioning his age unless directly asked, and if directly asked he would find a way to redirect the conversation.
Of all the companies he found, one accepted sellers of all ages. It was small.
After he was done with it, he would not be approaching it again.
He had also, while working through the financial problem, arrived at another idea entirely.
The body he was in was Andrew Garfield's body in every relevant physical sense.
This had implications he had not fully explored.
One of those implications had revealed itself in the shower on Saturday morning when he had started singing without thinking about it and then stopped and stood very still for a moment, processing what had just come out of his mouth.
Andrew Garfield could sing.
Therefore Peter Parker, in this body, could also sing.
He filed that away under future income streams and returned to the immediate problem.
Monday morning. He got dressed, left a note for May explaining he would be back late, and took the subway into the city.
The company was called Anvil Centre, which was an unusual name for a games publisher but not the strangest thing he had encountered in two weeks of living inside a Marvel universe, so he let it go.
The building was larger than he had expected for a company described as small. He adjusted his expectations accordingly and went inside.
The receptionist at the front desk was efficient and polite. Peter explained why he was there.
The receptionist asked him to wait. A few minutes later a man appeared, Caucasian, approximately thirty, with the specific energy of someone who built something from the ground up and still remembered what the early days felt like.
"Good morning, I apologize for the delay," the man said, extending his hand. "I am Esteban Fliswork."
"Peter Parker," Peter said, shaking it. "Good to meet you."
"My colleague tells me you have something that might interest us. What is it?"
"Three video games I developed. If you have time I would like to show them to you and get your thoughts."
Fliswork looked at him with the expression of someone recalibrating a first impression.
"You are one of the very few people who has come to us with this," he said. "Come. Let us talk in my office."
The office was clean and functional. They sat across from each other and Peter walked him through all three games, what they were, how they worked, what made them the specific kind of impossible to put down that generated the kind of word-of-mouth that no marketing budget could replicate.
Fliswork listened well, which was a quality Peter appreciated in anyone.
Then they tested them.
Fliswork played Geometry Dash for four minutes before he remembered he was supposed to be conducting a meeting. He tested the other two with slightly more professional composure, but not much.
When they moved to the business discussion Peter asked for seventy-five thousand dollars for the three games combined and ten percent of the profits going forward.
Fliswork accepted without negotiating.
He wrote three checks.
Before Peter left, Fliswork asked whether he would be interested in a position with the company. Peter thanked him, declined, and explained that he was pursuing an internship at Baxter.
Fliswork stopped pushing immediately, walked him to the exit, and shook his hand again at the door.
"It was a pleasure, Mr. Parker. I hope you can bring us more ideas."
"I will think about it, Mr. Fliswork. Have a good day."
The bank paperwork took the rest of the morning and a meaningful portion of his patience, and he left with a new credit card and the firm conviction that whoever had designed the account opening process had done so specifically to make it as unpleasant as possible for everyone involved.
He took the subway home.
He smelled the food before he opened the front door.
He stepped inside, followed the smell to the kitchen, and stopped in the doorway.
May was at the stove with her back to him, wearing a blue tank top and tight black shorts, hair still damp from a recent shower, moving her hips to Beast of Burden with the complete and total confidence of someone who was entirely alone in her own home.
Peter sat down at the kitchen table without making a sound.
This lasted approximately thirty seconds before May turned around.
The confidence evaporated immediately and was replaced by something that could be accurately described as a full system reboot, during which May's face passed through several distinct shades of red in rapid succession.
"Pe.... Peter," she said. "When did you.... I did not hear you come in."
"You seem very energetic today," Peter said pleasantly. "Any particular reason? Also, that outfit is genuinely excellent on you."
May looked down at herself. The red intensified.
"I am going to go change," she said, and was already moving toward the stairs.
"You do not have to do that on my account," Peter called after her. "I genuinely have no objections to the current situation."
She did not come back down for several minutes, and when she did she was wearing something considerably more conservative and the blush had been replaced by the very deliberate composure of someone who has decided to pretend a thing did not happen.
They sat down to dinner.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"Oh," Peter said, as if he had just remembered something. "I almost forgot." He reached into his jacket and produced a check, which he slid across the table to May.
She picked it up.
Looked at it.
"Peter," she said. "This is a check."
"Yes."
"For twenty-five thousand dollars."
"Yes."
"In your name."
"Yes."
She set it down on the table and looked at him with an expression that had not yet decided what it wanted to be.
"I do not understand," she said.
"I had an idea for some games," Peter said. "I sold them. I saw the rent bills in the kitchen cabinet two days ago and I decided it was time to stop having the idea and start implementing it. With that you can cover the house payments and have something left over."
May stared at him.
"Are you serious right now."
"Completely."
"Peter, I cannot accept this. This is your money."
"You can and you will," Peter said, in the specific tone that ended negotiations. "I told you I planned to give you everything. This is the beginning of that. I can generate more. Do not worry about the source, worry about the bills. Accept it, May."
May looked at the check. Then at him. Then at the check again.
"I will accept it," she said finally, and her voice did something complicated at the end of the sentence. "Thank you, Peter. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Ben would be proud of the man you are becoming."
Peter looked at her across the table.
"You are the best thing that has happened to me too, May," he said. "And thank you."