Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hmm..”

Sitting on a chair, Peter squirmed under the sharp eyes of his dad, who gazed at him with that superpower of his.

Yes, being a doctor with the caliber of Stephen Vincent Strange was a superpower in and of itself. In fact, Peter was pretty sure his dad could take X-rays with eyes and count antibodies with one touch on the radial artery. Quite frankly, it was borderline scary how easily his dad always seemed to know if and when something was wrong with Peter.

Like right now.

His dad picked up the notebook and wrote something down on it. Standing up, he stood a few steps away, holding up the notebook so that his inscriptions were visible to Peter.

“What does it read? Spell each letter.”

Peter’s eyes scanned his dad’s handwriting, the size of letters gradually diminishing from left to right. “A-l-l-o-d-y-n-i-a.”

Stephen cradled the notebook with one hand to write down something else, then stepped further away as he held the notebook up again. “Below that.”

“S-p-h-e-n-o-i-d”

Another word written down, another few steps scaled. “Below that.”

“M-y-o-c-l-o-n-u-s.”

There were three seconds of utter silence and no movement. Then, his dad dropped the notebook & pen on the kitchen island and sat down on a chair facing Peter.

His blue-green eyes were still watching Peter like a hawk.

Peter bit his lower lip.

“Myopia does not just heal overnight.”

That was true, of course it was. But he couldn’t just tell his dad that he had gotten bit by a probably dangerous spider while on his field trip and as a result had turned into some freaky mutant and was now super strong and sticky.

No, telling him all of that would be a complete disaster.

Peter didn’t know what to reply, so he just lowered his head.

“How was the science trip?” His dad suddenly asked, making him whip his head up with unimaginable speeds.

“Uh, it—f—fine. It was. Good. A lot of interesting. Things.”

Stephen waited a few more seconds, but when it was clear that Peter wasn’t going to say anything else, he raised an eyebrow.

“That’s it? Where’s the usual 10-page speech?”

“Well, its,” Peter sighed, anxiously fiddling with his fingers. “I—I’m just, tired. It’s been a long day, y’know. Can we, um, talk tomorrow?”

His dad placed a gentle hand on his knee, making him pause his fiddling.

“Peter, are you alright? You were quiet throughout the dinner.”

Peter held back a groan and almost stopped himself from making a full body squirm. How was his dad so observant!? Don’t get him wrong, he loved his dad, but god, why was he always so concerned?

“It’s nothing, really! I’m just really tired and really sleepy, dad, can I go sleep?”

His dad narrowed his eyes, but finally relented with a sigh. “Fine, I’m letting you go as long as it’s not something life-threatening,” he said with an air of confidence like he knew Peter was hiding something. “But Peter, if it’s anything detrimental, anything of importance, you’ll tell me. Alright?”

Peter nodded, pushing away the voice in his mind that said it’s already a broken promise.

His dad got up and engulfed him in a warm hug. Recalling The Desk Disaster, Peter returned the hug with the most cautious, feather-light touch as to not literally squeeze his dad to death accidentally.

“Sorry for being absent since Thursday, I couldn’t manage to squeeze some time out of the continuous shifts.”

“All good,” Peter chirped as his dad broke the hug, “Yesterday was mostly spent on the field trip and then I invited Ned over today.” Well it was a lie, but his dad didn’t need to know the disaster Peter was raising trying to figure out what the heck had happened to him.

Stephen hummed with a hint of smile. “Well, I’m glad to know the two of you didn’t burn down the house in my absence.”

Peter chuckled nervously, thinking about the desk in his room.

Stephen placed a kiss on his forehead. “Go on, get some rest.”

“I—um—I need a new desk.”

Stephen stilled. Then blinked.

“You know, when I was talking about burning the house—” he stepped away and proceeded towards Peter’s room, ignoring Peter’s protests, “—I was mostly joki—oh my god. Peter Benjamin Parker!”

Peter winced.

On a bright Sunday morning, the sledgehammered desk was gotten rid of, replaced by a new, expensive, customized desk, down to the specifications of one STEM student.

All pleas from the said student about getting a cheaper one were ignored.

Monday rolled around and Peter was back at Midtown after the hectic weekend.

Cold December winds bit harshly into his face and he tugged at the wrists of his jacket sleeves, trying to cover up more of his hands. Geez, it wasn’t this cold last week, was it? It felt nearly unbearable right now, and he wished nothing more than to go back to his room and blast the regulators on max setting.

“Hey dude,” Ned greeted him in the busy hallway, and they exchanged their usual handshake. Peter was sure to control his strength. He’d been sure to control his strength with every little thing ever since The Desk Disaster, he didn’t want to end up hurting anybody. He would forever be indebted to his old desk for enlightening him.

“How did you even do that!? Did you bring a sledgehammer home?” His dad asked, half exasperated and half utterly shocked.

“Um.. So I was like, just reading about The Ship of Theseus, and then Ned decided to make a bet on who can juggle the most books, for fun, and oops, one went flying right onto the desk.”

“Right. And broke it.”

“Yup.”

Alright, so maybe not the best of excuses.

But hey, his dad stopped prodding after a couple of reprimands and making sure he was unharmed and that there were, in fact, no sledgehammers at home. He even got Peter a new desk, no questions asked. Well, no questions other than “what do you need”.

“Dude, your hand feels too cold,” Ned’s words snapped him back to the present, and he looked down to see Ned’s hand poking into his sleeve. Ned’s fingers felt warm against his wrist.

He shrugged. “Yeah, been feeling a little cold. Guess I should wear more layers from tomorrow.”

Ned hummed, and they walked towards the physics class together. “I guess your dad would know if something really was wrong.”

Peter froze.

Something was wrong.

The spider bite.

Spiders did not thermoregulate.

Oh, shit.

“Peter?” Ned had stopped several steps ahead, waiting for his friend to catch up.

“Y-yeah, coming.” Pushing all the uneasy thoughts out of his mind, he joined Ned and they continued.

He’d barely been through the first period and his stomach was growling already.

He’d known this would happened, it kept happening the entire weekend. He kept getting hungry. Hence he’d brought a decent amount of granola bars with him.

As soon as the class ended and students started to shuffle out, Peter pulled out a granola bar from his bag and peeled the wrapper on one side.

But as he was about to take a bite, a weird tingly feeling on his neck made him jump slightly.

“Wassup, Penis Parker? Eating in the middle of class?”

He internally groaned even as he hid his hand — and the bar — under the table.

“The class is over, Flash,” Peter tried, hoping the bully would go away.

“What are you hiding under the bench, Penis?” He authoritatively splayed a hand on top of the desk, making it very clear that he would not be leaving anytime soon.

“None of your business, Flash,” Ned spoke up, walking up to them. “Leave him alone.”

Flash giggled like it was a very amusing scene. “Oh look, it’s the boyfriend! You’re so pathetic, Parker, you can’t even stand up for yourself, your boyfriend always has to rescue you like your knight in shining armor.”

Peter stood up and shoved the unconsumed granola bar towards Flash’s chest, whose steps faltered a little from the sudden force even as his hands instinctively came up to catch the newfound snack.

“You can keep it Flash, eat it, throw it, I don’t care. Leave me and Ned alone.”

Peter grabbed Ned by the wrist and tugged, forcing him to follow Peter as he headed for the exit.

“How many more of these did your sugar daddy give you?” Flash cackled behind him.

Peter froze.

His chest burned with intense, unadulterated anger.

“You know, now there’s an extra layer of pun! He’s your daddy, and he’s feeding your sweet tooth—”

There was a loud sound of a fist connecting to a jaw. Every other sound in the class ceased to exist except for that of a kid falling and colliding with the benches.

Flash looked up at him, stunned, a hand coming up to clutch his abused jaw.

“I don’t care what you say about me,” Peter snarled low and quiet, yet it sounded loud in the silence of the classroom, “But don’t say anything about my dad.”

There was a hand on Peter’s shoulder — Ned, his mind supplied — and only now did he register how close he had come to Flash’s face, the fear and apprehension clear in his bully’s eyes, hyperventilating as he leaned away from Peter.

Peter turned around to find the entire classroom staring at them. A flood of embarrassment instantly washed over him.

“F-Freak!” Flash yelled, pushing weakly at Peter’s chest, and skedaddled out of the room.

Most of the class was still staring at him, and he felt his throat close up under their scrutiny.

Freak.

“Peter.. Let’s get out of here,” Ned gently pulled at his shoulder.

Avoiding eye contacts, he followed Ned out of the class without a word.

Chapter Text

Stephen idly scanned his eyes through the charts of the patient who would go under in the next hour for laminectomy.

Usually he didn’t take up such.. simple cases, but this one had been interesting enough because of the history of a spinal fusion, done by some arbitrary incompetent surgeon Stephen wouldn’t bother looking up.

Right now he just needed to make sure he was ready. And fully focused for the upcoming surgery.. And wasn’t going to be distracted by other thoughts...

He sighed, setting the charts down on the table of the break room.

“You’ve been sighing a lot,” Christine said, joining him with two mugs of awful hospital coffee, one on each hand.

“I’ve been hit with a puzzle which I’m not sure how to solve,” Stephen confessed, cradling the hot mug his friend passed him.

Christine’s eyebrows shot to her hairline. “The Stephen Strange is admitting to not being able to solve something?” At Stephen’s flat look, she giggled and raised a hand in surrender. “Alright, alright. So what is it that’s got even His Greatness stumped like this?”

Stephen let out another sigh as Christine sipped at her coffee. “It’s Peter. Something’s.. changed about him.”

For a second she just looked at him expectantly, waiting for the punchline. When Stephen’s too serious expression told her that there wasn’t any, she snorted out loud. “Teenager problems? Really? That’s your impossible puzzle?”

Stephen feigned an offended look. “It isn’t just any teenager problems. He’s been.. a bit off.”

Christine rolled her eyes. “Of course, he is. I never thought I would need to spell this out for you of all people: Stephen, he’s going through puberty.”

Stephen gave her another offended look, and this one was of genuine offense. “Do you think I don’t know what puberty looks like? Peter’s started nearly a year ago. This isn’t puberty, it’s something else. He’s hiding something from me.”

“Hm..” Christine frowned, apparently still not convinced. “Well, what exactly are we referring to as ‘off’?”

“When I came home on Saturday, I found his desk completely in splinters.”

Christine blinked. “Um.. what?”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that The Hulk broke into my house and smashed his desk to pieces. And he gave me the lamest excuse anyone could ever come up with.” Stephen ran a hand over his face in disbelief. “He could have at least come up with a believable story? God, I thought I’d taught him better than that.”

“Wait.. you’re serious about this..?”

“Of course I am!” Stephen said, spreading his hands over the table exasperatedly. “And—and he doesn’t have myopia anymore! I checked him myself that night, even consulted Dr. Hayes yesterday, and of course she doesn’t believe me. But he walks around with no glasses or contacts, and hasn’t once fallen down the stairs.”

Christine’s jaw slightly hung on air. “..I think you should’ve started with that fact.”

Stephen huffed, staring down at his steaming coffee that was slowly growing cold, and idly ran a finger around the rim. “And he’s been.. too quiet,” he added in a quiet voice. “For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always been talkative. I have no memory of a time when he didn’t talk to me for longer than 10 minutes of us being in the same room. Even when we fought, he always just came right back to me in less than an hour.” And that was probably stretching it. Peter, too naive and forgiving for his own sake, always seemed to bounce right back to Stephen, no matter whether the fault had been his or Stephen’s.

But now.. now Peter had been this way for two whole days.

“Am I overreacting?” Stephen asked, raising his head up to look at Christine. “I mean.. realistically it’s only been two days. Maybe it’s nothing and I’m stretching it out of proportion.”

Christine looked down at her own coffee, tapping the rim with a fingernail as she thought it over. Stephen tried to guess the song she was tapping, but the rhythm alone could only tell so much. “You wanna hear my honest thoughts?” She asked.

Stephen nodded.

“Trust your gut. If you really think something’s wrong, look into it. Try to talk to him.”

“I did try to talk to him, except, he just evades me and continues to sidestep me for the rest of the day.”

Christine bit her lip. “Want me to try and talk to him? Maybe it’s something that he’s reluctant on telling you but will share with me.”

“You think it would work?”

As Christine was about to reply to that, his phone buzzed. Who would be calling him on his cell mid-shift? Most of people were required to call the Nurse’s station first. He reached into his pocket and brought it out.

The contact name Midtown High Office flashed on the screen.

Frowning at it, he took the call. “This is Dr. Stephen Strange.”

“Good morning, Doctor, this is Mr. Morita from Midtown High School. I'm calling to inform you that there has been an incident involving Peter, and as a result, he's been suspended for one week.”

Stephen wasn’t sure he heard it right, and had to mentally review the words.

...Suspended?

“What happened?” He quickly asked after realizing he had taken too long a pause.

There was a soft sigh on the other side of the call. “There was a physical altercation between Peter and his classmate, Eugene Thompson. Eugene sustained a fractured jaw, and based on the accounts we’ve received, it appears that Peter was responsible for the altercation.”

Stephen’s frown just gradually grew with that explanation, and Christine looked at him questioningly. The words just didn’t compute. Peter? His kid, who wouldn’t even hurt a fly, fought with another kid?

“Is Peter hurt?” He asked, and saw Christine’s eyebrows rise to her hairline.

“He’s physically fine, Eugene is the only one who was badly hurt.”

That made even less of a sense.

“My Peter wouldn’t just randomly start a fight with a kid,” Stephen said, rather defensively.

“I get that, Doctor, this is highly unusual behavior for Peter. But we can’t just ignore the fact that another student was badly hurt in a fight instigated by him.”

Stephen’s head swirled, trying to make sense of it. The Peter he knew would never just start a fight without there being a good reason.

“I’d like to request a meeting,” he told the Principal. “Today.”

Christine mouthed about the laminectomy surgery they were due for, and Stephen raised one hand in a ‘patience’ gesture.

There was a bit of hesitance in Morita’s voice. “I’m not sure if today will be feasible, Doctor. Eugene has already gone home due to his injury, and it might be difficult for his parents to visit—”

“Please, Mr. Morita,” Stephen cut him off. “I’m sure you’re aware of how costly my own time is. It’s an absolute stroke of luck that you even caught me free to receive a call during my shift. Can the boy’s parents not show enough decency to fulfill their responsibilities as parents and value the time of another parent and busy doctor?”

The principal was silent for a couple of seconds. “Alright, Doctor Strange. I will see what arrangements I can make.”

“Great. I’ll be there when the school hours end,” Stephen said and ended the call, not letting Morita voice any other objections.

“What happened?” Christine asked as soon as he had put his phone down.

“Apparently Peter is suspended because, and I quote them, gave a ‘fractured jaw’ to his classmate.”

Christine stared. “I just need to make sure.. we’re talking about Peter? Your Peter?”

Stephen sighed. “Yes. My Peter.”

“But.. Stephen.. even if he did get into a fight — which I find really hard to believe — a fractured jaw?”

“I know.” Stephen rubbed at his eyes tiredly. “I know.”

“Yeah.. I think I should really try talking to him.” Christine thoughtfully looked down at her empty mug of coffee.

Stephen looked down at his, and realized that he hadn’t taken a single sip yet. Whatever, he had no wish to gulp this abomination of a coffee anymore. “First.. I’ll try to talk him. Again.”

Christine raised an eyebrow in question. “You sound like you’ve got an idea.”

“I think I’ve got an idea of what’s going on, yes.”

Stephen was able to conclude his part of the surgery right on time to reach Midtown High sharp at 2:45 pm.

“Ah, hello, Doctor Strange,” greeted Mr. Harrington in the corridors. “Sorry for causing you so much inconvenience. I just got into contact with Flash’s caretaker and he’s on the way.”

“Flash?”

“Oh, that’s Eugene Thompson. He likes to go by Flash.”

The name, to Stephen, seemed like something the kid had come up with himself to look cool. Barring the fact that it did not seem cool at all, Stephen held himself back from commenting on the kid’s tardiness.

“Where’s Peter?” He asked instead.

“He’s in detention.”

The detention room was quite empty, the only occupants being Peter, another girl, and the supervisor.

And Captain America, apparently.

Peter’s eyes were firmly glued to the screen playing a very interesting (sarcastic) PSA by the American Hero. Stephen stepped in, walked closer to his kid, and knew the moment Peter’s head lowered that he was aware of Stephen’s presence.

“Did I let down your name?” Peter asked, head still low, as Stephen sat down on a desk next to him.

“Peter. Look at me,” Stephen asked in a soft voice.

Peter did, and his expression looked as if one wrong word from his dad could devastate him.

Stephen sighed. “Pete, I don’t care what they think of me. I just want to understand what’s going on with you.”

Peter pursed his lips and looked down again.

Stephen raised his head back up by a finger under his chin.

“Help me understand,” he pleaded.

Stephen could feel Peter’s adam’s apple bob under his finger. He didn’t let go. He knew that if he did, Peter would just take it as permission to continue evading him.

“Morita told me that you started a fight,” Stephen communicated. “I want to know from you. What really happened?”

“I.. didn’t mean to hurt him,” Peter said, the slightest hint of quiver in his voice.

Stephen slowly nodded, taking it as confirmation that Peter did harm the other kid. “And yet you did. Because..?”

Peter didn’t give, silence stretching between them for a few long moments.

“This is grossly domestic angst,” someone commented, breaking the silence, and they both turned in unison to the person sitting at the back.

The girl in question paid no heed to Peter’s stare, nor to Stephen’s glare, and continued to sketch something on her notebook.

“You have no obligation to eavesdrop on our conversation,” Stephen emphasized.

She didn’t even bother looking at him and shrugged. “It’s not eavesdropping if you’re talking in a place with people already present.”

“Do you even have detention?” Peter asked.

She huffed out a laugh. “No. I just like to come here to sketch people in crisis.” Smirking, she raised her notebook and showcased her latest sketch to them. Peter’s face, lips curled down sadly, rainy clouds above his head. “It’s you.” Slapping it down, she continued scribbling.

Stephen gave Peter a ‘who is this’ look.

“Ah, Doctor Strange, Peter,” Mr. Harrington called out, peeking through the door. “Flash is here. Please come to The Principal's office.”

Peter took the chance to practically bound out of the room. Because of course he would.

Stephen got up and started to walk towards the door.

“Let him learn to fight his battles.”

Stephen froze. Turning around, he narrowed his eyes at the girl.

“Pardon?”

She shrugged and looked up at Stephen. “It’s a good thing that you’re here, because it means you care. But if you just fight all his battles for him, he’ll never learn to fight them himself.”

Stephen would never admit, but he was thrown for a loop, receiving parenting advice from a kid.

She went back to her sketching, idly continuing, “Besides, it’s good that he finally stepped up against Flash. That idiot deserved the punch he got.”

“What do you mean, ‘finally’?” Stephen stepped closer to her, attention ensnared.

She hummed with perfect disinterest. “I guess Peter can’t be fully blamed for not taking action. It wouldn’t have worked anyway, with how much funds Flash’s parents donate to school. You know, favoritism and all.”

Oh, Stephen had heard enough.

“What’s your name?” Stephen asked the girl.

She looked up at him. “Michelle Jones.” She then looked down at her notebook, picked it up, and flipped it towards Stephen. “This you.”

Stephen ignored her interpretation of his excessively sharp cheekbones & messed-up eyebrows, and walked out of the room.

To say that Stephen was extremely disappointed, would be an understatement.

Arms crossed over his chest, Stephen glared at the boy that sat across from him with an ice pack to his swollen cheek. There was a man standing behind the kid, and his posture was more suited to a butler than to a parent. Peter was seated next to Stephen, his eyes firmly on the desk. Adjacent to them sat Principal Morita, his hands clasped over the desk, Mr. Harrington sitting opposite to him.

The kid, Flash, wouldn’t dare to look up at Stephen, though Stephen suspected it was mostly because he seemed to be two seconds away from whimpering in pain. He had yet to move his jaw at all, but Stephen could tell that there was no wiring, which meant it had to be a pretty mild fracture. So much for making a big issue out of this. But the truly infuriating fact had to do with the person who stood behind him.

Proxy. The kid’s parents had sent a proxy to stand in for them.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Strange,” Principal Morita began, and pointed at the boy followed by the person next to him. “This is Eugene Thompson, and this is Gerald, Mrs. Thompson’s butler. Gerald, this is—”

“Doctor Stephen Strange,” Stephen introduced himself. “Peter Parker’s father. Pray tell, Gerald, what’s the reason that none of the Thompsons could come to Eugene’s school and sent you instead?”

“Good day, Doctor Strange,” Gerald replied calmly. “Mr. and Mrs. Thompson are both going to be busy all day with important meetings today, which is why they couldn’t make it.”

“Surely you cannot be implying that their time will be entirely occupied by meetings,” Stephen drawled. “But fine, let’s go with what you’re saying.” He then turned to the boy. “Eugene, have your parents even called you to ask how your condition is?”

Flash looked at him like a deer caught in headlights, then his eyes flickered to the other occupants of the room with uncertainty. Slowly, he lowered his eyes and shook his head.

What a lame excuse for parents.

“Whatever,” Stephen muttered under his breath and turned towards the Principal. “Mr. Morita, I believe I still don’t know exactly what happened that caused the altercation between my son and Eugene.”

The Principal straightened up a little and began, “Based on the evidences, it seems Eugene was asking Peter to share his snack, in response to which Peter punched him in the face.”

A snack. Ludicrous. Who came up with this story? Stephen couldn’t wait for this day to be over already.

“Alright. And what are the said evidences?”

“Some of their classmates saw it happen, and Peter has also confessed it himself.”

Stephen whipped his head towards Peter, who still wasn’t making eye contact with him and was biting a corner of his lip.

“Peter, is that true?”

Peter thinned his lips and slowly nodded.

Stephen shook his head. “No, none of that. Use your words. Peter, what exactly happened?”

He saw Peter inhale a small breath and release it, before he started speaking. “Flash asked for my granola bar.. I was annoyed so I punched him.”

Stephen paused, taking in Peter’s voice and posture.

Peter really seemed to believe what he was saying. But how could that be? That was not like Peter at all. Moreover, the way he had his head low all the time, with a hint of expression in his face that looked like..

Oh. Oh.

Guilt.

Stephen sighed. Goodness, of course he felt guilty for injuring his classmate like that, even if the said classmate was the bully he never told Stephen about.

“Mr. Harrington,” he said, turning to the teacher.

The teacher perked up. “Yes, Doctor Strange?”

“Could you tell us a little about Peter and Eugene’s general behavior at school and how their relationship is?”

Harrington adjusted his glasses a little. “Well, Peter and Flash have almost the same classes, both are in Decathlon team, and have robotics club in common. Peter is a sincere student, does all his assignments, is never late to classes, and his grades have been the highest in his class since middle school. But he is a bit closed off, has less of a social presence among his classmates and is often shy to speak to those who aren’t his friends.

“Flash is a hardworking student, has good grades, is very active in classes, and generally has a very outgoing nature. Although, sometimes he can get easily sidetracked by distractions, or can get too competitive with other students such as Peter. They are in different friend circles and don’t interact a lot with each other, except for occasions such as Flash getting competitive with his classmates. Other than that, they’re both good kids.”

Stephen listened, and easily cataloged the information away. “So what I’m hearing is, Peter and Eugene are not friends, they’re not even aquaintances despite sharing a lot of classes, and yet Flash approached Peter to ask for his granola bar.”

“That does not excuse Peter injuring Eugene,” Morita interjected.

“Of course not, Mr. Morita, but I haven't gotten there yet,” Stephen told Morita and turned to Harrington again. “And not only that, but it seems that there is.. a sort of one-sided rivalry going on between the two. Am I wrong?”

Harrington shifted a little. “Rivalry is a strong word, Doctor. They’re just kids in highschool, competition happens.”

Stephen couldn’t help but roll eyes at that. “Of course competition happens. Our entire lives are a competition, and only the best make it to the top. Competition turns into rivalry when someone makes it their personal goal to beat a person and not a crowd, as Eugene over here seems to be doing.” He jutted his chin at the student in question. “Now, Principal Morita, I was under the impression that the school allows and encourages positive competition amongst the students, while discouraging conflicts, festering of negativity, and foul play. At least, that is what the policies stated the last time I had updated myself. Then why is it that a potentially adverse rivalry between Eugene and my son has gone unaddressed for so long?”

The room fell into a stunned silence for a second.

“There is nothing of the sort, Doctor,” Morita began but Stephen immediately shot him down.

“Nothing of the sort? Oh, please. All the evidences you need are in Mr. Harrington’s statement. Peter is the smart kid whose intelligence and nerdiness alienates him from majority of kids his age. Eugene is the ‘cool kid’, as the gen z must call them these days, who happens to be not as competent as Peter, and is therefore jealous of him for being so smart despite being a ‘loser’.” He turned his piercing glare to the other student, who gawked at him with a completely gobsmacked expression. “Am I wrong in my assessment?”

The boy didn’t reply, nor did anyone else. Not that Stephen needed them to. The boy’s expression already gave away that Stephen was on-point with his hastily put-together assessment.

Stephen turned to Harrington again to milk his next point. “Mr. Harrington. Could you tell us about Peter’s disciplinary history?”

“Uh, it’s clean, Doctor. Except for a couple of fines for breaking some chemistry lab equipments.”

“Right, which means he’s never demonstrated such an aggressive behavior towards any of his classmates before.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t.”

“Hm.” Stephen hummed, tilting his head towards Flash. “And what of Eugene?” He kept his eyes on the boy in question, who pointedly didn’t make eye contact with him and was probably shaking in his boots.

“Flash has.. a bit of history with foul language and attempting to provoke some of his classmates at times. But we have reprimanded him and told him how to properly behave.”

Stephen huffed. “So let me get this straight.” He pointed at Peter. “This is a well-mannered student with a clean disciplinary record.” He pointed at Flash next. “That is a student with a history of rocky behavior, who also has rivalry issues with this student. When that student approaches this student for a snack and gets punched away, he is immediately labeled liable after just quick words from him and his classmates.” Stephen crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the Principal. “I am starting to think you didn’t even do your research, Mr. Morita.”

Morita sighed. “Doctor, I understand that you’re partial to Peter as he is your son, but there is nothing more conclusive that Peter confessing that he hurt Eugene.”

“All he said was one sentence,” Stephen drawled. “That’s barely anything to paint a narrative. I expected you to know that, Mr. Morita. And he is deliberately omitting details, again, something you should have taken note of. How would you know that Peter didn’t just do it in self defense?”

Morita clenched his jaw. “If that were the case, their classmates—”

“Oh, screw it,” Stephen murmured under his breath, standing up from his seat. He was so out of patience. “Look, Mr. Morita, any other day and I would have been really glad to take this up with the Department of Education, for the unfair and biased treatment you inflict on your students. As it happens, I have to perform a tumor resection in..” he took a look at his watch. “38 minutes from now. And I believe it’s in both of our interests to wrap this up right here and now. So we know that Peter isn’t going to give up the details of what happened, and Eugene isn’t in a condition to talk. How about letting the two kids make up, calling off the suspension, and having a follow-up meeting at a later date when Eugene is physically better and his parents are available?”

The Principal’s face had gone hard as rock at the mention of Dept. of Education, and if that wasn’t a dead giveaway of their blatant favoritism towards Flash, Stephen didn’t know what else would be.

He knew he had won.

“I think you’re right, Doctor Strange. They’re just kids, there’s no need to turn this into a big issue over a minor fight.”

Oh, how the tables had turned.

Stephen didn’t let his satisfied smirk show in his face as he continued to keep eyes locked to the Principal’s. “Peter, go and apologize to your classmate.”

Beside him, Peter stood up from his seat and walked to a still-bewildered Flash.

“I’m sorry for punching you, Flash. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Peter said, and Stephen caught the sincerity in his voice.

Flash visibly swallowed, then gingerly nodded. They exchanged a handshake.

“Peter can continue classes in his normal routine,” Morita stated.

“Thank you for that. And thank you for your time,” Stephen said sarcastically, though he didn’t think that anyone except Peter interpreted it as such. “Now then, if there’s nothing else, we’ll be taking our leave.”

“Let me see you out, Doctor,” Mr. Harrington stood up.

“I know the way. Come on, Peter,” he called out, and left the office, Peter in tow.

Chapter Text

He hadn’t meant to punch Flash.

He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.

He’d been constantly overwhelmed ever since he came back from the science trip, trying to cope with whatever the heck had happened to his body. He’d been constantly hungry, it felt like his senses were dialed to 11, everything had been too much.

And then Flash had gone and said that.

Peter had lost it and punched him.

He’d even failed to control his strength! God, what would he have done had Flash been hurt much worse than a minor fracture? How would he ever have made up to him?

And then of course it hadn’t ended there. His father had to leave in the middle of his shift to show up at school. All because of him.

Peter silently entered the passenger seat of the Lamborghini. As his dad walked around to the other side of the car, he muttered curses under his breath directed to the Principal, that really, really shouldn’t have been audible to Peter. But then it was no surprise, seeing as his ears seemed to be oversensitive all the time these days.

Stephen entered the driver’s seat and engaged the car. Soon they were driving out of Midtown High.

Peter snuck a glance at his dad to glean what he was thinking. Judging from the slight crease on his brow, he was most definitely annoyed. Maybe a little disappointed too. Peter looked away, pursing his lips.

“Um., sorry,” he murmured, voice barely audible.

Stephen’s brow now creased in confusion instead, and his eyes flickered to Peter, still keeping his attention on the road. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Peter repeated just as weakly. “You had to come mid-shift because of me..”

His dad’s eyes softened. “Peter, unless someone’s life is on the line, of course I’ll come for you no matter what I’m doing.”

“I.. but..” Peter stuttered, trying to form words. “Aren’t you mad at me?? Since you had to come because of me?”

“What? No, I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at your school administration.”

Peter blinked. “Oh..”

Stephen shook his head in disappointment. “Bunch of incompetent gold chasers. Who let them sit on that position? Only your homeroom teacher is somewhat adequate. At least he seems to be aware of how his students are. Still, a coward like the rest of them.”

Peter wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he kept quiet.

There was that strange tingling on his neck again, stronger than earlier, feeling a little like anxiety but.. different. It was as if his senses were telling him to ‘STOP!’ Going with his reflex, he looked up at the road and saw a merge ahead. There was nothing, but... Danger. There was danger.

“Uh, maybe you wanna—”

A speeding car merged in front of them, and Stephen pushed the brakes right on time to avoid collision. Peter’s anxiety came to a spike and then instantly quieted down in-sync with the action.

Stephen tutted and murmured, “Idiots. Should’ve just taken the boulevard.”

Peter was too stunned to pay attention, because what the heck was that!? How could he tell there was a danger even without seeing the car coming?

“When were you planning to tell me?”

Peter blinked, then stirred when he finally registered his dad’s words. “Wha? Tell what?” Shit, did his dad already know about it?

Stephen looked at him sidelong before returning back to the road again. “About that kid’s bullying. When were you going to tell me that he’s been troubling you?”

Peter gaped. “Wh-what? There’s no.. bullying, it’s just—”

“Peter.”

Peter snapped his mouth shut.

Stephen sighed. “How long has this been going on?”

Peter got another, very faint tingling sensation and looked up at the road. “It’s really not that serious at all,” he mumbled.

“Not serious? Peter, this is about your safety and mental health.” His voice was soft and patient.

Peter shrunk a little at that. He hadn’t wanted to trouble his father with something like this. Stephen already did so much for him, why trouble him with something so small and stupid?

“Why didn’t you tell me, Pete?” He asked again when Peter remained silent.

Tell you what? That your son is a loser who can’t even stand up for himself? That he always has to rely on others for everything?

He wanted this conversation to end, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere to escape inside the lambo.

Peter was well aware of his dad’s high standards and expectations for right about every conceivable thing in life. And he was pretty damn sure that the only reason he’d never been on the receiving end of one of his father’s scathing comments was because he’d simply lucked out of screwing up in a way that would’ve mattered.

So, how was he ever supposed to tell his dad that he was being dogged by just a bully in his class, when all that the said bully did was make fun of him and make him trip on impossible assortment of things? How was he supposed to tell that he didn’t even have the strength to fight back that much?

How was he supposed to tell his dad that he didn’t want him to feel disappointed?

“Hm. You know, this conversation is feeling very one-sided,” Stephen commented, and Peter registered that he was quoting Hiccup from HTTYD. He stamped down the smile that tried to grow on his face.

Instead, he forced a sigh. “Can we just.. talk about this another day?”

“So that you can postpone it by 2 years? No.”

Peter slumped his head on the seat’s backrest and remained silent.

“Okay, then.. how about you tell me why you don’t want to tell me?”

Peter pursed his lips. He wasn’t going to get out of this, unless he decided to literally open the door and jump out.

He inhaled a deep breath, and began.

“It’s just.. well, I don’t know how to be you. You’re just this ridiculously accomplished person who earned it all by himself. You didn’t get any help or support from your parents, you probably didn’t even have enough money to get by during pre-med. But you survived it all by yourself and never needed anyone’s help. And, today, you have a name and you save people’s life everyday and people just automatically flock to you. I..” Peter bit his lip and looked down. “I wanted to be like you.”

Stephen turned to him with an expression that Peter couldn’t quite decipher. Seconds ticked by and Peter grew more nervous.

“Um.. I think you should focus on the road,” he suggested.

Stephen huffed, but did turn back to the road. “I didn’t know that’s what you felt.”

Peter’s anxiety stirred a little again, and he looked up to see a dog running on the sidewalk with its leash dragging through the ground. Thankfully its owner caught the leash before it had run off on the road.

“My parents never approved of me pursuing the medical field,” Stephen spoke after a while of silence. “I was 18, my sister had just died, my dad had kicked me out of the farm, and I had no financial backing. It wasn’t easy.”

Peter’s heart clenched at the way his dad’s voice changed. It wasn’t often that he talked about his sister, but whenever he did, it was with that same voice full of grief and regret.

“I had no one, Peter. And I survived, but I don’t pride myself on it. It’s something I’d much rather forget. I hated it, and that’s why I don’t want you to have to go through anything of the sort. I want you to live your best life, something I didn’t have when I was younger.”

Peter blinked a few times, his throat feeling tight from the strange mix of emotions swirling in his chest, his vision blurring with unshed tears. His dad simply wanted the best for him, because he hadn’t gotten to experience that in his own time. Of course. But like the idiot he was, Peter assumed that his dad would be disappointed in him for not being all tough like him.

Stupid.

“Oh,” he uttered softly after a second.

“And, don’t.”

Peter looked up at his dad. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t try to be me. You aren’t me, can never be me. Because while you’re like me in certain aspects, you’re a very different person. Perhaps you take after Mary on that. Or May and Ben.”

This time tears did spill from his eyes, trickling down his cheeks, from the sheer approval his dad was giving him with that. He wasn’t perfect, he was clumsy, he was socially awkward, he didn’t know how to be normal, and his dad still wanted him to be his imperfect self.

“I don’t want you to change yourself. I want you to be you. Will you be yourself, for me?”

Peter took a second to wipe the thick tears off his face, and slowly nodded.

“I—I can do that,” he said with a quivering voice.

His dad gave him a smile, before focusing back on road.

“I’m proud of you, Peter,” he said again after a while.

“Wha-where did that come from!?”

“I realize that the only times I’ve told you that is when you’ve accomplished something. So I want to say it now, when there’s no reason to think that I’ve just said it on a whim or because of your achievement or merely in the heat of the moment. Peter, I’m very proud of you, and I’m glad I have you in my life.”

Peter felt like he could burst with emotions. He hadn’t known how badly he had needed to hear it all.

“Thank you,” he sniffed. “I’m glad too.. to have you.”

He really, really was. Peter didn’t know how he had lucked out with the best ever dad in the world. Had he not taken Peter in, right now he probably would have been in some foster home, devoid of proper food and proper education and Love. Belongingness. Safety.

He’d have been devoid of a Home.

“We’re home,” Stephen announced, and Peter snapped out his thoughts.

“Oh.” He opened the door — and was very careful with his strength while he did it — and got off, closing it back.

Stephen rolled down the window. “Appointment with Dr. Hayes, tomorrow, exact 6:10 pm. I want to see you ready when I come to pick you up.”

“What!? But I don’t need—”

Before Peter could voice his protest, Stephen drove away.

“Oh, come on.”

After freshening up, he felt so much better than he had at all since the spider bite. His heart felt light, and he was still a little high on the emotions, but it was a nice kind of high.

He sat down on his desk to get some work done. But then, he took one look at his History homework and shoved it away.

Instead, he brought up his laptop, turned it on, opened Chrome, and tried to think about what he should search..

“Hmm,” he hummed, and typed,

Spider danger sense

The first result that came up was a wildlife facts blog. He scrolled through it until his eyes caught something of interest.

...Spider’s most important source of information about the world and its hazards comes from highly sensitive hairs that cover the bodies of most spiders. These hairs perceive even low level vibrations coming through whatever surface a spider is standing on. Many species also bear hairs that sense vibrations in the air, including sound.

Yeah, no. He did not have hair all over his body.. Well, not any more than a normal human.

He closed the website and tried to type a different search term.

Spider sixth sense

This time the results looked more promising; immediately the first blog was titled ‘Sixth Senses in Animals’.

...One special sense is called mechanoreception. This sense allows web-spinning spiders to perceive minute pressure on their exoskeleton. Spiders have specialized organs called slit sensilla. THese organs are small grooves at the spider’s joints, which change shape under stress. As the spider sits on its web, the slightest movement on the strand causes a slit to change shape, and mechanoreceptors in the slit detect the change.

The slit sensillum is so precise that the spider can determine the creature’s size and weight, or establish if the strain was just a passing breeze.

..While that was fascinating to know, that was definitely nowhere close to what Peter was experiencing. He was pretty damn sure he had no new organs in his joints and definitely couldn’t tell the shape or size of the danger. Though, he could tell the intensity of it, and wondered if that counted as an equivalent.

Probably not. His sense was definitely some sort of an ‘instinct’ sixth sense, not a physical sense. Which was super weird.

Then again, his sticking ability, too, was nothing like an actual spider’s. Should he even be surprised to come out with no explanation again?

He huffed to himself and absently typed,

Spider web silk

Oh, Wikipedia. It always gave way more than he asked for, but honestly, he would take that over getting less or getting misinformed.

..A dragline silk's tensile strength is comparable to that of high-grade alloy steel (450−2000 MPa)..

..Silks are about a sixth of the density of steel (1.3 g/cm3)..

..A given weight of spider silk is five times as strong as the same weight of steel..

..Silks are ductile, with some able to stretch up to five times their relaxed length without breaking..

For something that seemed as fragile as snowflakes, spider silk sure wouldn’t strike as the world’s strongest organic substance to your average joe. But it was, in theory, as strong as steel if not more. Peter suspected that it would be multiple times stronger than steel if weaved together like braids, since that was something one could do with spider silk, but not as easily with steel.

A shame that such a powerful substance could only be created by these small, 8-legged creatures. It must be really difficult to farm spider silk.

Peter was hungry (again) so he beelined for the kitchen.

In the fridge, he found some of yesterday’s leftovers and.. ooh, Rhubarb pie!

Peter loved his dad’s homemade pies the best, no matter what he made them of.

He won’t really be mad if I finished it alone because I was too hungry, right?

One full stomach later, he flopped down on his bed, sighing in content.

He glanced at the desk where his laptop still lay open, the wikipedia page on spider silk displayed on the screen.

If spiders could create such a strong material organically and all by themself, then surely, there could be some way to replicate it in a lab..

He hopped off the bed with a new determination. Fishing out a notebook from his backpack, he flipped to a fresh page and wrote down,

Project Spider Silk

Chapter Text

“Dude dude dude, your dad totally killed it yesterday!” Ned squealed, trotting up to Peter who was picking books out of his locker.

Peter just gave a half-nervous laugh, closing the locker. “I think it was a little overkill..”

“Was he breathing fire on Principal Morita?” Ned asked as the two started down the hallway.

Peter frowned. “What? No.”

Nef huffed. “Then I’m sure that wasn’t that overkill.” The teenager giggled while Peter rolled his eyes. “You should’ve seen Flash’s face when he walked out after you left.”

“Oh, um. Speaking of that, apparently it’s not over yet and dad’s asked for a meeting again when he’s recovered. I am not looking forward to that.” Peter looked around the hallway, aware that Flash would likely not be coming to school for a few days but still wanting to confirm it.

“I heard one of his friends say that he won’t be coming school for two weeks so I guess you’ve got that much time. But anyway, I wouldn’t worry if I were you ‘cause your dad can totally rain fire down on anyone anyday.”

“That’s the main reason I’m not looking forward to it,” Peter quietly mumbled to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing, let’s go to the algebra class.”

“..and f(x) equals x squared minus nine, divided by x plus three..”

While the rest of the class was studying algebra, Peter was scribbling down organic equations to create synthetic spider silk.

The silk was essentially a block co-polymer protein made of spidroin polypeptides. And spidroin was just a long chain of 3,000 to 4,000 amino acids linked together, mainly the acids alanine and glycine. He was pretty sure that they had glycine at the chemistry lab. Alanine probably not, but it wasn’t a big deal; he could just synthesize it with the strecker reaction. The main problem was creating peptide bonds to join them all in a long polymer chain.

Or, in layman’s terms, he had all the building blocks he needed for the silk. He just needed to figure out how to glue the blocks together and build a tower of 3,500 units, without causing the entire building to fall.

“Peter.”

Peter jerked up to look at the teacher.

“You still with us?”

“Yeah, um, yeah.” He quickly slid his chemistry notebook under his math notebook.

“Can you tell us how to solve for x?”

Peter looked at the board and realized there was a new question now. Still, he took one look and understood how it should be solved, and told the teacher as much.

When they were finally at the Chemistry lab, he decided to try out his theories while the rest of the class was preparing to perform reduction reactions of aldehydes and ketones.

With the organized chaos around the lab, it wasn’t hard at all for him to grab all the chemicals he needed for his experiment. And as expected, he couldn’t spot any containers in the lab that read ‘alanine’. That was fine. He could synthesize it himself.

A couple of reactions later, he possessed a beaker of a clear liquid that was decidedly not spider silk. It was non-viscous and non-sticky and definitely nothing like the silk he had expected to obtain.

Spider silk v0.1 was a fail.

“So..?” Stephen prompted Dr. Hayes, who was scanning Peter’s charts for the third time now, her eyes squinting at the information as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Peter had sat through several different tests now, from a normal visual acuity test (which his dad had blatantly scoffed at) to Corneal Topography, the results of which were now on the tablet under Dr. Hayes’ palms.

“It.. appears that.. young Mr. Parker’s eyes are as normal as can be,” she said, disbelief laced in her tone.

Stephen rolled his eyes at the obvious diagnosis. “I told you that two days ago.”

“Yeah but.. this doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

Dr. Hayes glanced at Peter, and he subconsciously shrunk himself a little. She sighed and glanced back at Stephen again. “Well then, what do you want me to do, doctor?”

“I came here for answers, Dr. Hayes, not an obvious diagnosis that I already made three days ago. How did his myopia correct itself within the span of a day?”

“What do you want me to tell you? It’s the first time in my career that I’ve seen something like this.”

“And here I thought you were the best optometrist in the city.”

“Dr. Strange. Let’s not get any more personal with the comments, shall we? What we’re seeing right now might as well be a scientific miracle.”

The two doctors continued discussing, while Peter sat quietly in his corner, wondering if it would have been better to have lied about his eyes condition. He hadn’t, because he’d known that Stephen was sharp enough to see through his faux when it came to the medical and health side of things.

In the past Peter had always had to come up with the most plausible stories for his ‘injuries’ that were actually caused by Flash’s bullying. Granted, using ‘I fell off the stairs’ every single time wasn’t a clever idea, but by using it for long enough he had essentially turned it into a consistency, and Stephen was susceptible to believing in consistencies. So it had worked.

Now, Peter had had these freaky powers for a little over 96 hours and his life had already turned upside down, from almost getting suspended for losing control over his strength, to having to scrunch his eyes shut or cover his ears whenever there was way too much input around him. And the two doctors talking right now in this bright room was not helping with his high sensitivity.

Maybe he should have just bought fake glasses and continued to wear them. Maybe he should’ve lied about finally being comfortable with wearing contact lenses. Maybe—

A hand landed on his shoulder, making him flinch. He realized that he indeed had his eyes scrunched shut and hands over his ears. He quickly lowered his hands and opened his eyes to look up at his dad hovering near him, biting back the wince that threatened to show due to the sudden intensity of light.

“Pete? You alright?” Stephen asked him, voice a little concerned.

“Yeah! Um..” He tried to search something for an excuse, but was thankfully spared.

“Sorry about that. Me and Dr. Hayes got a little too.. vocal about our frustrations. None of it was directed to you, alright?”

Peter didn’t even know what exactly they had been talking, but he simply nodded along.

“Let’s go,” Stephen prompted him out of his seat.

They were soon back in the car and heading back towards home.

“So when do you want to start learning to drive?” Stephen mentioned casually at some point.

“Wha— me? Drive!?” Peter stuttered out, flustered.

“Well, obviously. You’ll need to be able to get to places by yourself once you turn adult, won’t you? It’s a good skill to have.”

“It’s a long time before I’m an adult. And I don’t wanna scratch your Lambo,” Peter muttered, shifting his attention to the road at the faint tingle of his senses. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his dad, but rather the fact that his senses seemed to be hyperactive whenever he was in a car with his dad. It was weird and just a hint unnerving, seeing as his senses weren’t this jumpy when taking public transport. He supposed it was just a side effect of high speed. Maybe.

Well, his dad had always been impeccable in his driving skills for the duration of 5 years that Peter had known him. He wasn’t going to start doubting him now.

Stephen huffed. “Oh, you’re not getting behind the wheels of this Lambo or the Audi anytime soon, Pete. Not until I have confidence in you. But it would certainly be quite a flex to take them to school, don’t you think? You can show it to your friend, what was his name, Flash?”

Peter tried to sigh but it transitioned into a muffled laugh. “You want me to learn driving just so you can one-up Flash?”

“Now why would I do that?” His dad shot him an innocent smile. “But really, it’s a useful life skill. Want me to enroll you the upcoming summer?”

Peter’s senses spiked a little, but he realized it was directed for a delivery guy on bike who nearly got rammed by a different car trying to overtake the bike and them. He frowned, watching the rash driver speed ahead of them. “I’ll uh, think about it.”

His dad hummed in acknowledgement. “We need to set a date for Christmas shopping. Have you decided on a gift?”

Peter lit up instantly. “Oh! This new set just released recently and it looks exactly like the Sandcrawler from A New Hope! I also heard that it’s just massive and there’s a lot of good reviews. The other day Ned told me that—”

“Alright, alright, you’ll have it then,” Stephen replied with a smile in his voice.

Peter winced just a little. “Oh, um. Just, it’s a.. bit more expensive than most lego sets I have,” he added tentatively.

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Your dad is a millionaire, Peter. Or did you forget that little detail?”

His senses blared, and he looked up at the road to watch a kid running through the crosswalk even though the traffic lights had yet to transition. Turns out that his dad had already anticipated it and came to a halt before the crosswalk. A second later the traffic lights turned red for them, the kid completely oblivious to their parent’s panic as the parent quickly crossed the road.

“Pete?”

He jerked out of his stasis at his dad’s voice. “Um, of course I know. It’s just that you really don’t have to spend so much on me.”

“Of course I have to, you’re my kid. And you zoned out for a second there,” Stephen seamlessly added the two sentences completely unrelated to each other. “Something still in your mind?”

“Nothing,” Peter mumbled.

Stephen hummed, not really believing. “Flash..?” He prompted.

Peter sighed. “It’s really nothing, can’t I just have some random thoughts once in a while and stop to think about it?”

“No,” Stephen said, and Peter frowned at him at first. “You don’t have random thoughts once in a while, you have them all the time.”

Oh, he meant it in that way. Peter huffed to himself and mumbled an inaudible ‘Not all the time.’

“And you barely ever stop to think about it,” Stephen continued as the traffic signal turned to green once again. “Before you know it, you’re gushing all your thoughts out as if they’ll die forgotten if you don’t speak them. You’ve stopped being like that lately, and that’s what concerns me.”

Peter deflated a little, sensing genuine worry bleeding through his dad’s voice.

Well it wasn’t like he could simply say that ‘Hey dad, so I was bitten by this spider which might or might not have been a genetically modified experiment, and since then I’ve got this freaky powers that let me break desks and jaws with a touch and allow me to stick to the ceiling! Oh, and all my senses are heightened to the point that your cologne actually feels a little suffocating to me!’

Nope. He had no idea how his dad would react to that, what he would think of Peter after that. At first Peter had thought that maybe they were just symptoms and would go away with time, but it was becoming more and more obvious that they were here to stay with him for good.

And he didn’t know what to do with them, what to do with the fact that he might as well be a freak now.

A freak who lost control of his strength and broke another teenager’s jaw.

He hadn’t wanted this.

Peter wondered which would be the more likely case: his dad despising him, or being afraid of him.

He didn’t speak again for the rest of the car ride. Neither did Stephen.

Two days later, he was trying out v0.2 of the spider silk in the Chemistry lab.

This time he synthesized the alanine differently so that the reaction also produced some other amino acids as by-products.

For the main reaction for spidroin, he would be adding dicyclohexylcarbodiimide and N-hydroxysuccinimide to speed up the activation of carboxyl groups in amino acids. Both of those compounds were crystalline white, powdered solids, and he could see their jars sitting on a shelf all the way on the other side of the lab...

He glanced at their chemistry teacher on the front.

“The AlCl₃ is crucial in the formation of the intermediate electrophile..” He was writing the Friedel-Crafts Alkylation reaction on the board, his back on the rest of the class.

“Hey Ned,” Peter whispered to his friend next table who was fully immersed in taking notes.

“Huh?” Ned looked up at him.

“I’ll be right back, don’t let anyone come near my desk.”

Ned gave him a thumbs-up even as he turned back to his notebook, his other hand continuing to scribble notes, no questions asked. “Sure dude.”

Carefully, making sure that the teacher wasn’t going to look back at them and that Peter wasn’t drawing unnecessary attention to himself, he tried to saunter over to the shelves of chemicals, keeping his steps as casual as he could.

Once he was there, he pretended to be interested on the jar of AlCl₃ while he covered the actual jars he was interested in with his body, sneaking out a bit of the two white compounds onto two bits of paper which he then neatly folded and hid in his pocket. Glancing at the front, the teacher was still preoccupied explaining Alkylation to the class, and it seemed like nobody had really paid attention to him sneaking out compounds.

“Sup Parker.”

He jumped at the voice, startled. Whirling around, he found Michelle standing there, nonchalantly leaning on her desk with hands crossed over her chest.

“Um.. just checking out the aluminum chloride?” He said, unsure if she had seen what he was doing.

“Y’know, they really shouldn’t be keeping so many of the dangerous compounds out in the open like this,” she rambled, and Peter wasn’t really sure where she was going with this. “Like aluminum chloride, which is a strong lewis acid and can easily corrode your skin upon contact. I mean, sure, we aren’t allowed to open the jars by ourselves, but that might not stop some idiots who decided to go mad scientist for the day and conduct experiments in the middle of the class.”

“You know what? You’re totally right,” Peter pointed her finger guns, and then quickly trotted away before she could throw another remark at him. Now he really didn’t want to know whether she knew what he was doing and just how much she knew.

He quietly went back to his experimentation, and the results weren’t much better than v0.1. He got a clear, non-viscous liquid again in his beaker. Maybe, he thought, that the reaction wasn’t complete yet, so he kept stirring his mixture with a glass rod for quite a while. No change.

He dipped two gloved fingers into the liquid, and the texture he felt was somehow even more slick than the last version. That was not good at all. It needed to be sticky.

When he brought his fingers out and inspected the liquid, rubbing his thumb against his index for a second and then separating them apart, it created a thread of liquid from his index to his thumb. But whether that was really spidroin protein, he couldn’t be sure. It could simply be high surface tension; although high surface tension and non-viscous did not belong together.

He took a tentative sniff the fluid, and frowned at the strong aromatic scent, almost similar to ester. The peptide chain was not supposed to have a lot of aromatic side chains, and esters were almost non-existent. Then again, what did he know; not all aromatic compounds actually smelled aromatic.

Another failure.

He scratched out spider silk v0.2.

Later that night, he sat on his couch by himself, laptop open on the coffee table as he tried to scribble some magic formula for spider silk v0.3. The last two versions as well as all the observations of their results were laid out on a couple of papers, lying on top of the laptop’s keyboard.

Maybe he was using the wrong combination of amino acids for the polypeptide. Either that, or the peptide chain simply wasn’t forming as long as he wanted it to form. Of course, diagnosing the problem would’ve been much easier if he had a better way of determining what compound was forming in his practical experiments. Right now all he had to go off of was physical characteristics and rudimentary test observations, which were not much.

Deep in contemplation, he didn’t even realize when his dad called.

“Are you creating protein?”

The sudden, deep baritone voice of his dad made him jump out of the couch and reflexively land his feet perfectly on the ground.

His dad held the paper of spider silk v0.2 in his hand, frowning down at the contents. Ugh, why couldn’t his senses alert him in the times that actually mattered!?

“Th-uhh it’s, nothing!” He quickly snatched the paper out of his dad’s hold before he could read any further. It was futile, though, because his dad had photographic memory.

“Spider silk, version 0.2?” Stephen asked, inquisitively raising an eyebrow.

“Um, it’s really nothing,” Peter snatched the v1.0 off the laptop, shoving both pieces of paper into his notebook and shutting it close with perhaps more force than necessary. “Just a curious experiment, it’s nothing..”

Stephen seemed to have not heard him at all, lost in his own thoughts as he rambled his opinions. “Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide.. you can’t use that as catalyst there, it’ll just react with the residual products formed during alanine production, creating aromatic rings that will attach themselves at the end of peptide chains, stopping the reaction and creating a useless, silky, possibly electrophilic mixture.”

Peter gaped. “Yeah.. uh, that’s what happened..”

“It happened?” Stephen raised both his eyebrows. “You tried synthesizing it? At school?”

“Um.. no?” Peter bit his lower lip looking down at his closed notebook in his hands.

“Peter,” Stephen prompted, and Peter looked up at him. He had a hint of smile on his lips. “Whatever you’ve got there so far is brilliant.” He extended a hand, asking for the notebook. “Let me see?”

Peter sighed softly and gave up, opening his notebook and giving it to his dad. Stephen scanned his eyes across the myriad of organic reactions Peter had scribbled out, his face slowly growing awed and amazed.

“This is.. revolutionary, Peter, you made these yourself!?” Stephen looked up at him with so much pride, Peter might as well have been blinded by the intensity.

“Well, I got help from the internet,” he shrugged and pointed at the laptop, feeling warmth creep up his neck. “To look up the structure of spidroin.”

“I bet the internet didn’t help you with figuring out how to create proteins without the involvement of any biological entities. Because that’s thought to be impossible.” Stephen flipped the pages to bring up the independent page of spider silk v0.1. “How did you even think of this!?”

“Well, it failed so I guess it really is impossible—”

“No,” Stephen cut him off. “Your first version is more successful, I’m certain.” He ushered Peter onto the couch and sat down next to him, bringing Peter’s notebook between their laps.

They spent the next half an hour discussing how to extend the peptide chain beyond limits, Stephen pointing out so many things Peter possibly wouldn’t have thought of. He enjoyed it, as much as he enjoyed discussing any topic of science with his dad, who could not only keep up with him but always tended to test his limits, prod his understanding, open him up to unfamiliar perspectives, and push him to break past his own limits.

Even as they discussed the silk, it was almost as if his dad already knew the solution to get to the end goal, but was waiting for Peter to figure things out by himself, setting it up as a challenge for him, nudging him and pulling him every now and then to help him reach the correct path.

For the first time since the spider bite, Peter felt this familiar warmth, the comforting mix of exhilaration and calmness he was so used to whenever diving into intense discussions with his dad.

“Look at the time,” Stephen huffed out as they concluded their discussion. “The dinner would be cold by now.” He collected the bits of paper on his lap, neatly stacked them over the laptop, and got up from the couch. “Don’t drown yourself in equations all night, join me in 5. I’ll reheat the dinner.”

Peter hummed in affirmation, completing scribbling out his latest equation before he shut his notebook. He felt a lot more confident with the newest version of spider silk, though that was mostly thanks to his dad.

Peter joined his dad on the dinner table. It didn’t go unnoticed that the serving of lasagna laid out for him was much more than what he would usually eat, before the spider bite. He stole a glance at Stephen, who gave no reaction whatsoever.

Peter wondered what his dad made of his recently increased appetite, though Stephen hadn’t brought it up ..yet.

“Let me know how it goes,” Stephen said after swallowing some of his pasta. “When you try to synthesize it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter affirmed. “You think it’ll work?”

“I think it might,” Stephen replied. “If it does.. it’ll be a scientific miracle. You’d be the first person to synthesize such a complex protein with zero involvement of living organisms. It could completely revolutionize biochemistry.” Stephen had those eyes of pride and awe again.

Peter felt his cheeks heat up under the implicit praise. “Technically you helped with the main bits..” He stuffed some lasagna into his mouth.

“Did I? All I did was point out your mistakes. You figured it out all by yourself,” Stephen said with a smug, yet prideful smile.

Peter huffed. “Well, you do that all the time. You do it because you already know the answers but you want me to figure them out myself.”

“Exactly.” This time when Stephen smiled, it was different, like a personal pride, if one could call it that. Like Peter had given something tangible to his dad, which the man held and treasured as if it were of great personal importance.

Peter went back to his lasagna. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

The next day, on Chemistry lab, Peter synthesized spider silk v0.3.

When he poured the final solution of very odd smelling catalysts into the beaker, it initiated a much more exothermic reaction than his last two tries. For a second he genuinely feared that the reaction would superheat the beaker and explode into bits, but then it quickly calmed down a lot.

Tentatively, Peter grabbed a glass rod and dipped it on the solution in beaker, gently stirring it. There was some more exothermic reaction but not nearly as volatile. He felt viscous resistance against his glass rod growing with each stir and frowned. Halting the stirring, he pulled the glass rod up and—

He gasped loudly when web fibers were dragged up along with the glass rod, his audible tone catching the attention of many of his nearby classmates, including Ned.

He quickly dropped the glass rob back on the beaker and hurriedly closed the desk drawer before anyone had seen what he was doing.

“Dude, you alright?” Ned asked, watching him cover his mouth with hands as he tried to hide his hysteria.

“Yeah, yeah, all good,” he gave a thumbs-up towards Ned’s general direction, not really looking him in the eye. “Just had a realization moment, y’know?”

“Ah,” Ned nodded in understanding and left him to his devices.

Peter was internally screaming. He had created artificial spider silk!

He couldn’t wait to tell his dad about it.

He didn’t tell his dad about it.

“It failed?” Stephen repeated, slightly dazed.

“Yeah.” Peter shrugged and ate his stir-fry. “Created a non-viscous clear liquid again.”

“What kind of properties?” Stephen asked, likely already re-running the equations through his head and categorizing everything that might have potentially gone wrong.

“Um, I don’t think it can really be synthesized without living organisms, y’know? It was just a curiosity anyway, to try and see if it was possible. I don’t think I’ll try any further.”

Stephen hummed in acknowledgement, staring down at his plate with a slightly dismayed face.

Peter wasn’t sure why he lied. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to share. It would have meant a lot to Stephen, both in personal and professional level. Peter knew that, and yet he didn’t tell him.

It was selfish.

But..

An idea had started to form in a corner of his mind. An outlandish, outrageous, dangerous idea. And he wasn’t sure his dad would appreciate the said idea if he found out about it.

And so, Peter shouldn’t tell him anything about it...

Chapter Text

Once Peter got past the initial hurdle to polymerize the spidroins, he was able to progress much more smoothly.

Now he had Spider Silk v1.0, very viscous, very sticky, and liquid in room temperature unless spun into fibers.

Peter discovered that extreme barometric pressure difference especially helped with weaving the fluid into solid web fibers. So, his current idea involved creating web cartridges that would store the spider silk fluid under very high pressure, and a release mechanism to rapidly shoot out the fluid into low barometric pressure atmosphere, instantly solidifying the fluid into webs.

It was all really exciting, and he felt a little bad for hiding it all from his dad, but he knew his dad wouldn’t approve if he found out what Peter had in mind...

Sitting on the couch at his home, he scribbled designs for the web shooter. The TV was on, streaming the latest news on the Avengers.

The headlines read, Iron Man’s tech stops gamma rays from leveling the city, Avengers triumph again.

The video showed Iron Man along with other Avengers walking out of an establishment with some apprehended people.

“The group of privately funded scientist tried to replicate The Hulk’s power with undisclosed levels of success,” narrated the reporter. “According to the reports, the experiments were not only illegal, but also extremely dangerous and lacking in safety protocols. A moment’s delay in stopping the experimentation could have caused gamma radiation to spread across a large radius of the city. Iron Man’s timely intervention and Captain America’s leadership has once again saved the day.”

Peter had always been fascinated by the Avengers, especially Iron Man. If someone were to ask him right now why he was sketching out schematics for his own superhero costume and gear, he would tell them that he was following the footsteps of his favorite hero, his inspiration, his savior.

If it weren’t for Iron Man that day at the Stark Expo...

31st May, 2010
Stark Expo, Queens, New York

Peter had been visiting the Expo with Aunt May and Uncle Ben since the opening day, and had been overjoyed every single time he was here.

The place smelled of innovation and tech and future. It was like a dream, beautiful and surreal. Granted, a lot of things at the Expo were things that Peter did not understand yet, but Uncle Ben was always very willing to indulge him and teach him new things. He loved it. He loved his Uncle Ben, and he loved science.

Tonight was going to be a big presentation of armed drones by Justin Hammer. He’d been told that the drones were kind of like Iron Man armor, and was excited to see them. Too bad Aunt May couldn’t join them, she had a shift in the hospital.

They couldn’t afford to buy a seat near the front rows, so they were standing far, far away from the stage, where crowds were allowed to stand and watch for free. Peter was so short compared to the rest of the people. He could see nothing.

Then, Uncle Ben grabbed him and sat him down on his shoulder to allow Peter a better view. Peter shouted with glee when after realizing that he had a very clear view of the stage now. His shout was lost in the loud cheer of the crowd.

The man, Justin Hammer, stepped into stage and started revealing all the human-like drones. Peter could only watch in awe. The fascination might have tripled when the final surprise was revealed: a battle armor piloted by an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel.

The armor looked somewhat similar to Iron Man, but was clearly different since there were different colors and also a much heavier build than how Iron Man was. It was, still, amazing. At that moment Peter wondered if maybe, one day, he would be able to build his own armor. How cool would that be?

Suddenly there was a rumble on sky. An object at high speed came flying toward the Expo, and Peter instantly knew what — or rather, who — it was.

“Iron Man!” He shouted gleefully as the object flew past their heads towards the stage. And even though the crowd was silent this time, his voice was lost in the noise of Iron Man’s thrusters.

Iron Man landed on stage, and the crowd erupted into cheers and roars. Peter enthusiastically joined the cheers, even putting on his Iron Man mask. Iron Man joined the side of the other armor and they waved at the crowd. Peter couldn’t have been happier. He was getting to see Iron Man from this close, which might not be as close as the front seats, but this was still the closest Peter had been to his favorite hero.

And then, suddenly everything changed. All the drones started pointing their guns at Iron Man, even the other battle armor.

What had been cheers of exhilaration a moment ago, turned into screams of fears. People started running, pushing. Uncle Ben held on to Peter still on his shoulder as he tried to navigate through the distressed crowd.

Iron Man took off to the sky, and all the weapons started firing towards the sky, breaking all the glass of the ceilings. The shouts and screams turned louder.

“Peter!” Uncle Ben shouted, lowering Peter from his shoulder and covering him with his own body to save him from the rain of glass shards.

Peter was confused. He had no idea what was going on. Just a few seconds ago everything was so nice and happy, and now suddenly everyone was shouting.

“Let’s go, let’s get out!” Uncle Ben told him loudly over the screams of the crowd. They were being jostled around by the running crowd as Ben tightly held onto Peter’s hand, pulling him along as he tried to make way through crowd.

At some point there was too much jostling — people pushed and pulled, some unlucky ones fell down, other people trampled over the fallen ones as they ran, no one cared about anyone except for themself. Peter shuddered a little, watching the fallen people being heartlessly trampled by others.

It was in this mess of push and pull that Peter somehow lost his Uncle.

“Uncle Ben!?” Peter pulled his mask to his hair, calling out at the top of his lungs. “Uncle Ben!” People continued to push him around, and for all he knew, he was drifting farther and farther apart. “Stop! I lost my Uncle Ben!” No one listened. He barely stopped himself from tripping off his feet multiple times, afraid of what might happen to him if he fell to the ground like the others.

When the crowd thinned enough to not make him almost trip every time they pushed him around, Peter saw drones flying past their heads, firing weapons at something. And there were ground drones, firing destructive missiles on the walls and ceilings. People were getting hurt. So many people were being harmed..

Peter lowered his Iron Man mask back to his face, watching as more ground drones walked out of an entrance from where people were still running out.

He watched as the drones scared off the crowds of people, making them run away.

He watched and watched, as one large drone walked closer to him.

And then the drone looked down at him.

He raised his costume-gauntlet at the drone without thinking. Years later, he would reflect that it was a really dumb thing to do.

The droned aimed its gun down at him, and for a split second, for the first time in his life, Peter experienced the pure, absolute terror of being faced with mortality first-hand.

The next second there was explosion and light, and Peter had a full-body flinch and jumped back.

Iron Man was there. Iron Man was right behind him. It was then that he realized that he was still alive and the drone was dead.

“Nice work, kid,” Iron Man told him and flew off. Peter could do nothing but gape, watching Iron Man fly away.

He stood there, staring at the sky even after Iron Man was gone. It took his brain a long, long time to catch up with what had just happened and snap out of its daze. He had just met Iron Man. He had been so close to his idol and had received a praise from him.

Iron Man had just saved him.

...he could’ve been dead. He could’ve been dead as a fossil, had Iron Man not showed up.

He owed his life to Iron Man.

He stared down at his web shooter sketches, a bittersweet feeling taking over him.

He was the only one who had survived that night. Uncle Ben hadn’t.

Much later, he had been taken to a hospital, only to be told that Aunt May was gone too. That she had been in an accident while on her way to the Expo, and had died when brought to the hospital.

Peter’s life had been spared and snatched away in the very same beat.

There were a lot of things he wouldn’t have understood when he was that age, but death was one thing he did. Grief. Loss. Sorrow. Those things, he understood too well for an 8-year old.

He had cried his eyes out, uncaring of the rest of the world or of what would happen to him. Reflecting now, he had, been in a lot more trouble than just losing his aunt and uncle, of course. He had lost all of his living family, all except one.

And it was only thanks to the timely intervention of the one that he hadn’t been put into the system that night. God knew how his life would have been right now if he had grown up as a foster kid.

Back then, he had been so confused when he’d been told that this man called Doctor Stephen Strange, his aunt’s co-worker, was his dad. Because he had known his dad to be Richard Parker. He hadn’t truly acknowledged Stephen as his dad back then, but had lived with him because what else was an orphan, homeless, 8-year-old supposed to do?

Stephen had been shit at being a dad at first, but they had slowly gotten along, had learned and grown and bonded. Had accepted each other as family.

Three years ago, when Peter had been old enough to understand, Stephen had told him about the relationship he’d had with Peter’s mom, Mary Parker. Biologically, Peter was Stephen’s kid, but the two had broken up long before even his mom had known she was pregnant. Moreover, Mary had never told Stephen about Peter’s existence. Stephen believed that she simply did not want him in her life anymore, and had confessed that he anyways wouldn’t have reacted well to this discovery back then, since he’d never planned to have kids.

Then Richard had come to her life and had embraced Peter as his own son.

Sometimes Peter wondered if things would’ve been different had he not been separated from Ben at the Expo. Would he have died as well? Would Ben have survived?

Would he have ever met Stephen as his father?

Perhaps there was never going to be a good answer to any of his questions.

He sighed, turning the page of his notebook, and started scribbling more designs.

Dad 17:32
Christmas shopping next Monday?

Me 17:33
k!

A couple of days and a bit of tinkering around, Peter had a pair working web shooters. They would sit on his wrists, with the web release trigger on his palm.

“Okay, let’s see..” He inhaled and exhaled a deep breath, then put the web shooters around both his wrists. They felt a tad bit clunky, perhaps he would have to do something about that later.

He aimed his right hand up at the ceiling of his room and pressed the trigger with his middle and ring finger. It instantly shot a braid-like thread of web that latched onto the ceiling upon contact. “Holy shit,” he breathed. It had been rather difficult to get the silk to braid with itself, but he had done it.

Tentatively, he tested the web and tugged at it. It stayed firm in its place. Peter grinned at his success.

Next, he left his room’s doorknob open and went to the other corner of the room. He shot a web at the door and gently pulled. The door opened.

Too excited now, he hopped out of his room and into the living room. His dad wasn’t going to be home for a couple of hours yet so he had plenty of time to experiment.

He easily opened and closed the refrigerator’s door, stuck a pen to the ceiling, pulled open the drawer of his dad’s watch collection, pulled an apple into his hand from the fruit basket on the dinner table, among other nonsensical things.

Two hours later, he found himself rushing around the house with a razor cutter on one hand, hastily getting rid of all signs of web from the house.

Why had he allowed himself to do this?

By the time Stephen opened the front door and entered, Peter was innocently sitting in his room studying.

“Oh hey, welcome back,” he greeted, walking out of his room, as if he hadn’t heard Stephen’s car enter the garage a few minutes ago.

Stephen gave his usual hum in acknowledgement and slid into his own room, shutting the door close.

Peter quickly scanned his eyes all around to absolutely make sure he’d gotten rid of all the webs. He spotted some strands sticking to the floor-to-ceiling windows and quickly got rid of them. Few more minutes of scanning and he was assured that there would be nothing in here for Stephen to suspect about. He sighed in relief as he sat down at the piano’s bench.

Not the best of his ideas, he would admit. He was never going to experiment with webs inside his house, ever again.

A glance at the piano and he thought that he might as well play a little of something to soothe his nerves. Even if all he could play was Fur Elise, and the easy parts of Ode to Joy, Canon, and Clair de Lune. Which wasn’t much at all.

He decided to play Clair de Lune, and placed his fingers on the keys.

Then immediately snatched away both his hands as if burned.

He had too much strength now. He had to remember to be gentle all the time, especially with how much his dad loved the antique piece.

Bringing his right hand to the piano again, he very gently pressed a key. It produced a soft F note. He lifted his finger and hit the same key just a little bit harder this time. It resulted in a too loud F note that stung his ears with the already heightened sense of hearing.

He sighed in defeat. This was like learning piano all over again, except worse, because he had to learn to control his finger strength for the volume modulation.

“Are you trying to break her by hitting her keys so loud?” Stephen’s voice called out, and Peter turned around to catch him closing the watch drawer, which had been ever-so-slightly misaligned, sticking out. Peter internally winced at his mistake. Stephen was sharp, he absolutely could and would catch minor slip-ups like that one.

“Uh sorry, my hand slipped,” Peter lied.

“It sure didn’t look like a hand slip to me, with how you were giving her a love tap.”

Well, shit, Stephen had just watched him tap ‘gently’. He fumbled for an excuse, but was saved from having to give one when Stephen gestured him to get up. Peter immediately understood that his dad would play something, and vacated the seat for him.

“It’s a new one,” Stephen said as he arranged his hands over the keys. “Released this year. I quite like it.” And then he started playing it.

The feeling of hearing his dad play something new was always novel, captivating. Peter had absolutely no idea how Stephen learned piano compositions as fast as he did. If he hadn’t been a doctor, he would have surely become a world-renowned pianist, easily.

The composition wasn’t very long, perhaps 4 minutes, but Peter found himself fully relaxed by the end of it, slumped carefree on the couch, watching his dad play.

“That was really good!” Peter complimented when Stephen had his hands off the piano, signaling the composition was over.

“Croatian Rhapsody, Maksim Mrvica, 2015,” Stephen recited, then turned to Peter. “What do you want me to play?”

Peter hummed in thought for a second. Then, “Passacaglia?”

Stephen complied.

“Are those.. feet marks on the ceiling?” Stephen asked sometime after dinner.

How his dad even spotted that on the dark wood ceiling, was beyond Peter.

He, however, expertly deflected by turning on the TV which was conveniently streaming a medical drama show. His dad never passed on the opportunity to pull apart shows and movies for their medical inaccuracies.

Sitting on his desk, Peter stared down at his minor debit card.

His dad had handed this to Peter as soon as he had turned 13. It always held a generous amount of allowance for him to spend or ‘in case of emergencies’, with strict promises from Stephen that they would have a talk in case of Peter spending carelessly.

The last time they’d had such a talk had been: never.

Outside of his deli sandwiches and the occasional snacks or treats, Peter barely used the card at all, if ever. He’d never felt the need to. Not only was he already well-provided for by Stephen, but also having spent years of his childhood with his aunt and uncle had taught him the value of money very well. So he didn’t spend a lot, and didn’t spend very often.

But right now..

He stared at his open notebook, displaying sketches of costumes he’d come up with. His designs were all rather rudimentary compared to The Avengers but.. well, Peter was neither a professional tailor, nor an experienced superhero. So he would live with whatever creativity his mind could supply.

But to do anything at all about the designs, Peter would need to buy the materials. And as much freedom Stephen gave Peter, he absolutely would notice it if Peter were to spend on something so out-of-character for him, or even if he were to withdraw cash.

All that without even considering the fact that Peter was, again, not a tailor and didn’t know shit about sewing. He barely knew just enough about clothes to save his life in a tailor’s shop, thanks to Stephen.

So for now, Peter could not go for a full-on costume.

For now, he would have to be realistic and start with something more.. homemade.

He spun his chair until he was facing his closet on the opposite wall.

He got out of his chair.

Two days later, donning his full costume sans the mask, Peter stared at his reflection on the full-length mirror.

The red hoodie as well as the blue sleeves & slacks were thick enough to provide some level of protection, even if that wasn’t really a lot. His web shooters sat comfortably on both wrists. Fingerless gloves because he wasn’t really sure if his sticking ability could fail because of fabric, even though it hadn’t failed him yet.

And finally, the mask, with exposure lenses to control too much of input into his senses.

He put on his mask, pulled the hood on his head, and inhaled a deep breath, studying his full look in the mirror. He looked.. he looked—

“—Stupid,” he muttered.

He pulled off the mask, tossed it one way, and walked off.