Chapter Text
Peter turned fourteen on a sweltering August day.
It was so hot, in fact, that Ben immediately chivvied him and May out of their heated high rise death trap and hightailed it to the nearest grocery store to alternately stick their heads into the only freezer that wasn’t in the eye-line of an overzealous check out clerk.
Peter later found out that the girl was gunning for employee of the month- for want of any other credible achievements to add to her college application. She didn’t get it, missing out for the third time in a row to the shop owner’s son-in-law, a short, uppity man, who, upon spotting their little makeshift family of three basking in the chill, immediately kicked them to the curb.
“Electricity doesn’t grow on trees, you know!” Then he shook his sweaty fist at them like a harassed cartoon character, trying to catch the eyes of any bystander unlucky enough to have pushed their cart in their direction, seeking some sort of validation he failed to receive as the clearly well-established New Yorkers turned their gazes to their shopping.
Unwilling to let the petty man ruin their day, May squared her shoulders.
“Ice cream cake,” she said decisively, and then frog marched her husband and nephew to Frost Giant’s Frozen Emporium, which, despite its name, was actually a rather modestly sized shop on the brink of foreclosure. Concerned members of the public deemed the shop name insensitive in the wake of Loki’s attack on the city. Peter would’ve been inclined to agree, had he not been gifted a white chocolate chip cookie as a birthday freebie.
As May covertly designed Peter’s ice-cream cake, having somehow enlisted the creative input of the shop owner’s previously glassy eyed young son, Peter leaned over to Ben with a whisper.
“She remembers I’m lactose intolerant, right?”
Stifling a grin with a weathered hand, wedding band glinting against the harsh sun even indoors, Ben shushed him.
“Just walk upwind, Pete.”
Which was advice Peter unfortunately ended up having to take, after the three of them devoured the cake in one fell (albeit impressive) swoop.
Once again shafted to the blistering New York tropics, standing uncomfortably on the sun heated sidewalk, feeling as though just one more degree would melt them all like a hot puddle through the cracked concrete their congressman had promised for two terms to repair, Ben checked his watch.
“Noon o’clock,” the man said, much to Peter’s displeasure, “time for the real surprise.”
After a suspiciously well choreographed series of drumrolls from his Aunt and Uncle, the couple finally revealed Peter’s present. It was something the boy had spent months dropping casual hints about, but had largely assumed had gone unheard in the midst of 12 hour shifts and sleep deprivation.
But today, Peter’s dreams were finally coming true.
They were going to Oscorp’s Laboratories of Science and Development.
Suddenly, the heat was a power source. It thrummed between him and May and Ben and played a happy tune to the rest of their day. He learned about Astrophysics, he watched a three second time lapse of a thousand year old star burning out. He watched a group of interns snatch a piece of chalk from each other’s hands as equations bubbled and frenzied between them.
But, for whatever reason, the thing that captivated Peter the most lay in the four glass walls of an enclosure.
May and Ben were preoccupied in the previous room, taking turns electrocuting each other’s hair with static shock. So, Peter lingered in a quiet moment alone, a small breather from the ever mounting excitement of the day.
Eight eyes glistened plaintively up at him.
Readjusting his glasses, Peter leaned in to examine the little creature. Then he turned his attention to the lab notes strewn on the table besides him.
‘Argiope argentata- the silver garden spider’
“Huh,” Peter breathed. “You’re not so scary.”
Though something about the spider troubled Peter, something that lay deep within its dark eyes, almost calling out for Peter to help.
Or had the heat gotten to him?
Then, answering his question, the silver spider’s leg snapped clean off.
“What the-“ Peter scrabbled to open the cage, to help the defenceless thing, not even questioning what sort of help he’d even be able to offer.
Spotting an almost imperceptible latch, Peter shoe horned his fingertips into the small space and wrenched the container open.
“Here, come on,” Peter held out his hand, letting the injured Spider crawl onto it, “let’s have a look at you, see if we can get you fixed u-“
“Ouch!”
Two fangs punctured the surface of Peter’s palm, and he dropped the spider in shock, keeping the arachnid in the corner of his eye as twin beads of blood rippled up from his broken skin.
“Rude,” Peter admonished the spider, feeling marginally embarrassed at the display. He was thankful he was the only occupant of the room, though even that was beginning to seem suspicious- the tour had been heaving every step of the way.
His question was promptly answered as the door was flung open so roughly that it bumped and chipped the wall it careened into.
A man sporting a crisp white hazmat suit surveyed Peter in abject dismay, holding a crumpled‘keep out’ poster in his hands.
“Get out of here, it’s radioactive!” The man, or rather boy, panicked, his voice young and cracking around the edges. “Oh god I’m gonna lose my job.” A gloved finger jutted out. “Stop breathing,” he ordered uselessly.
“I don’t think that’s how radiation works, dude,” Peter deadpanned, even as his own steely panic turned his veins to ice.
“I can’t afford rent, I’m nothing without this job, oh god, oh god, oh god,” the boy continued to spiral, his warm jerky breaths fogging up the clear visor of his suit.
“Woah,” Peter put his hands up as though taming a wild dog.
His blood had already crusted into two tentative, innocent looking scabs.
Shrugging, Peter tucked his injured hand into his pocket. “This is fine, seriously. And, uh, I know I didn’t see anyone in here. Did you?”
Actual tears now in his eyes, the boy frantically shook his head, watching in mute shock as Peter slowly extracted himself from the room and fled down the corridor- but not before plucking the ‘keep out’ sign from the shell shocked worker’s hands and pasting it firmly on the door.
If Peter had lingered for a few minutes longer, he would have witnessed what had drawn him to the little spider in the first place.
At the time, at the tender, naive age of fourteen, he probably would have pressed his eyes to the glass cage in wonder, at least at first. He would have shouted for May and Ben to come watch.
He would have called it a miracle.
But now, three years later, Titan’s moons hazing and looming above him, his own limbs crumbling to dust beneath Mr. Stark’s shaking fingertips, he’d call it something else.
“Mr. Stark, I-“
Ash hung in the air, stagnant and choking.
Peter found Ben and May, unabashedly laughing at their frizzing, haloed hair.
Tony lowered him to the ground.
A little spider with eight pleading eyes cowered in the corner of its cage, screeching as its leg regrew six months too quickly.
It wasn’t a miracle.
Peter’s cells stitched back together piece by jagged piece, it reclaimed the poisoned ash each and every time it tried to take him again.
It was an abomination.
“Mr. Stark,” Peter gasped, “I can’t go.”
....