Chapter Text
It was shortly before the summer holidays, when Peter's school was invited on a school trip to Oscorp Industries. It was a huge possibility for the students to visit a research facility, where many technicians worked in genius laboratories and most of them were glad to have that chance. A week before their appointed date, their teacher gave a speech about how lucky they were to visit Oscorp and how the students should behave accordingly.
She then had passed around some piece of paper, which was a permission slip, for parents to sign, to agree that their kids could go on that class trip. Peter had to provide the school with both his aunt's and uncle’s signatures, since they were his legal guardians after his mom and dad had passed.
It had already been ten years since they had died during a five-day-long vacation, when their plane crashed, and Peter didn’t have many memories of them. But it still stung badly, whenever he was reminded that he didn’t have his parents at his side for all of his accomplishments. Uncle Ben and Aunt May were great! They just weren’t his actual parents… Sometimes Peter got mad at himself for not being able to remember his parents. He knew of course how they looked like, but even though he would never tell May, he suspected that was because she and Ben had shown Peter many many pictures of his mother Mary and his father Richard.
Peter simply remembered the version of people he saw on those pictures, instead of having actual memories of his birth parents. When the thought of not remembering his parents on his own, popped into his mind, he often got very sad and blamed himself immensely. How could he just not remember them? He knew that even small children should be able to have memories of their early life, so he couldn’t grasp why he didn’t remember Mary and Richard Parker.
…
The field trip was very welcome to May and Ben. They had promptly signed the sheet when Peter handed it to them and sent him on his way, thinking it would be a great experience for Peter and his friends.
When Peter's class went, they got to see so much of Oscorp Industries that they had a really good time there, until they went into the labs and ran into a little bit of a problem there. Peter got bitten by a loose spider. Oscorp’s lab technicians weren’t aware of what had happened that day, and because Peter didn’t say a word to them or his teacher, they never found out. The spider that bit Peter was swatted away by his hand and then forgotten for the rest of the tour.
Up until two days later, when his symptoms started and forced him to stay at home until he got better. He was so sick, he felt as if it would be his end. May and Ben were incredibly worried about him, because he had run such a high fever. It took him about a week to be fine again, and then it took him another few days to recognise the powers he had gained after being bitten by that spider.
It began when Peter had to go to school a little later than usual that day, so he got to sleep in for once. When he finally got up, the apartment the Parkers lived in was empty, and he had all the space to himself. It had happened in the kitchen. He noticed his new powers. He was totally surprised when he realised how his hearing and seeing were suddenly much improved, and he couldn’t wear his glasses because they made his vision blurry instead of clear. It had felt so weird to leave the glasses behind, when he stepped out on the streets.
And that became a little bit of a problem actually because, of course, Aunt May and Uncle Ben noticed that he wasn’t wearing his glasses anymore, which resulted in them taking Peter to the optician. Peter feared they would somehow find out that something within him had changed, but he was surprised when the optician suggested that sometimes kids grew up to have better eyesight, because of the use of glasses and later on not having to wear them.
After he had overcome this difficulty, he decided to become more careful when discovering new powers. It was getting hard to disguise his powers at school, too. He can’t participate in any sports anymore, because it would be so obvious that something about him is different to the Peter before. When he throws a basketball now, it flies so much further than anyone else can throw. It’s unexplainable. So, he no longer does it.
…
After a while he figured out his other brand-new powers. One random afternoon he realised he could stick to the walls. He was in the shower, after a particularly hard day, arms stretched out on the wall, when he realised, he couldn’t move them anymore.
First, he had freaked out and tried to rip them away, but when he realised that this won’t work, he gave up and tried a calmer approach. He looked at the way his hands stuck to the wall and saw that it only affected his hands. He could still lift his arms, which was a huge relief for Peter. As he tried to free himself, he used some clever approaches to the situation presented to him. First, he somehow got some soap between his hands and the wall, but to no avail, then he let the water flow over hands and shower wall, but his hands still didn’t budge.
He got pretty frustrated by then. Nothing he tried seemed to work, the more he tried to free himself, the more stuck he got. At some point he felt, as if the sticking got worse the more, he grew agitated.
It took about half an hour, until his hands finally slipped off the wall and he was able to get out. He was freezing badly, because he couldn’t let the water run for half an hour with no break. He had wrapped himself quickly into a fluffy towel and sat down on the bathroom floor. He had to think for a while, and after some minutes he came to the conclusion that he should find out if he had developed any other strange powers.
He called the school, pretending to be sick, and stayed at home for the day. He knew May and Ben would come back late this evening and that this would be his chance to find out any powers and try them out.
So, he did exactly that. It took him about two hours to find out he could actually climb up every surface he wanted and that it was a great experience to see Queens from the point of a skyscraper. When he got home, he threw the dark hoodie and the bandana, he had wrapped around his face to stay anonymous, into the washing machine (they were pretty sweaty, considering that Peter had just climbed multiple buildings on his own) and went to bed.
Later that evening, when Ben and May were back home, he told them he was sick, but that he was sure he would feel better tomorrow and that he wanted to go to school. His Aunt and Uncle were satisfied with that statement, and they all had some hot dinner, after which Peter went straight to bed.
After that the fun time begun. But only until his uncle died unexpectedly in a mugging incident.