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Since Peter had made the conscious choice to embrace his mutations rather than suppressing them, he had gotten surprisingly good at adapting to them. At accepting that there was no beast within himself that needed to be tamed; at accepting that, instead, he was just changing.
Changing in ways that weren’t nearly as monstrous as he had first thought.
He owed most of his radical (if reluctant) newfound self-acceptance of his arachnid attributes to his two enlightening exchanges, first with MJ, then with Jean. Two very different conversations (with two very, very different people) that had both, nonetheless, led to the same conclusion — that despite how long he had spent trying to be just Spider-Man (for far longer than just four years, if he was being honest with himself), he was still Peter Parker, too. As much as he had tried to forget that.
And Peter Parker had gone through worse bodily changes in his life.
Coming to terms with being a little more spider than he’d initially thought was certainly a hell of a lot easier than when he had been thirteen, and having to come to terms with the fact that he was (as much as the phrase made him shudder) stuck in the wrong body — especially now that there was next to nothing he could do about it.
May had always been wonderful about it, and so had Ned; even MJ had given Peter hope that maybe he could have love after all, despite his doubts about ever finding someone who could love someone like him. And then Tony and Pepper had been his saving grace, for a few years; they had helped him get on testosterone, and had helped him begin the steps to get surgeries once he finished high school.
That wasn’t and would never be perfect because it would never be the body that he truly wanted, but it was at least something. Something to make him feel a little less wrong, and a little more like he could be happy as Peter Parker, and not just as Spider-Man.
But then Tony had died, and then so had May, and then Peter Parker had ceased to exist — and then there was nothing, and no one, and he was completely alone with nothing but his own sorry company and his own shitty, stupid body.
(“People like us don’t get to live a normal life”, Jean had said. “We don’t get to have friends, or a family. Those people are gone.”
She had meant that in a different way, of course; in relation to their mutations.
But for Peter, the fact that he was transgender had always made him feel like more of a mutant than the spider bite ever had.
“That life is over.”
Either way . . . she had been right.)
And so he had just . . . thrown himself into being Spider-Man. Trying to ignore the fact that he was so entirely alone — and that he no longer had any help or any way to make his being transgender a little easier to bear. Or, really, to make his being, in general, a little easier to bear.
When he was just Spider-Man, he could pretend that there was no Peter Parker. He could pretend that he wasn’t alone; he could pretend that he hadn’t lost everything.
He could pretend that he hadn’t lost all hope for his life the moment he had realized what he was.
“You spent four years trying to erase Peter Parker from existence”, Jean had mocked him. “No wonder the spider’s trying to swallow up the man.”
If only she knew that he had been trying to erase the person he was for a lot longer than that.
Even remembering the things May had said to him couldn’t help take that feeling away.
“You’re a really special person.” He remembered the grief in May’s voice, layered over by the love but still so very, very present every single time she talked to him — because she could see the pain he was in every day, and she knew that there was next to nothing she could do about it.
She had always tried so hard to help him love himself — but there had been no way for him to do that, not really, besides feigning ignorance through Spider-Man. He thought that that was why she’d been so supportive when she’d found out that he was Spider-Man; because she could see that it actually made him happy, while he wore the mask.
“I would hope that that would always make you feel really great about yourself, but I know, sometimes, it won’t. Sometimes it’ll feel really lonely.”
He remembered her hugging him close; he remembered her whispering that she hoped he would always remember how much he was loved, even when he was alone. Even when the whole world was against him.
If only she knew how true that would be; how alone he would become, left with nothing but himself, and his state of being that he despised so wholly.
And at least these new arachnid changes were distractions from everything else that made his body — that made him — so wrong.
Of course, with his new mutations, there were still things that frightened him; that caught him off-guard, and that left his skin crawling as though he were literally infested with thousands of little spiders. It was a similar feeling to when he had first been bitten — but tenfold, with all the new changes that came with these new, unexpected mutations.
The way surges of emotion bled his eyes into dark obsidian was unsettling no matter how many times he caught sight of his blackened gaze; the natural webs still felt a little bizarre, and the heightened sensitivity that had come with his rapidly-changing nervous system still tended to leave him curled up in the dark and quiet most days after patrol, until the world stopped being so bright and loud, and he could open his eyes and uncover his ears without either sending a painful shock through his system.
But there were good things, too. Things that made all the rest of it feel worth it.
He was stronger, faster, more agile than he’d ever been. His body seemed to understand itself in ways it never had before, as every mutation brought some new instinct or ability that somehow felt frighteningly natural. He had stopped fighting the changes, and had started listening to them instead — trusting that whatever his body was becoming, it knew what it was doing.
And that was a foreign concept, for Peter. His body had never exactly been . . . so kind to him, before.
Puberty had felt like nothing short of dragging himself through a slaughterhouse, coming out the other side chopped into a thousand pieces that had raggedly put themselves back together into a shape that was all sorts of wrong. Even after the spider bite had given him his abilities, there had still been that wrongness associated with himself.
Not Spider-Man, never Spider-Man; his alter ego had always been his escape from . . . everything, including his own person. When he was Spider-Man, he could just be, without worrying about anything except when to dodge — and usually, his spider-sense would do that for him anyway.
He remembered how much he had resented it, when Tony had said to him — “If you’re nothing without that suit, then maybe you shouldn’t have it.” How would he know? No one could ever understand how it felt to be Peter Parker. How it felt to only feel right with the suit on, flying between skyscrapers on the tendril of a spiderweb, throwing himself headfirst into crimestopping and feeling jubilation at just being able to be Spider-Man, because that meant that he didn’t have to be Peter Parker.
Even now, he still did feel that wrongness. He thought that as long as he was in this body, he would — he had accepted, with no small amount of grief, that he would never escape it.
He was barely even in any position to even start to do that again; not with his resources and support system, or rather, lack thereof. He barely got by with his low-paying day job at Delmar’s, and the apartment that he was in for dirt-cheap because anyone without his immune system would get asbestos poisoning. He had no means of getting his hands on anything more than what he had — he had been manufacturing his own testosterone compound whenever he could, especially now since he had stopped having to make his own webbing and had been able to put more towards that, but even that didn’t feel like enough. Not nearly enough to get rid of all the wrong.
But these newer bodily changes made it more tolerable.
It was almost as if his body was trying to convince him that it was no longer his enemy.
The new mutations felt more like welcome friends, for the most part — though he could do without the organic webs (as admittedly convenient as they were) and the migraines he kept getting as he kept on adjusting to his enhanced senses.
In the weeks he had spent adapting and changing and accepting, however, there was nothing so radical as what happened to him that took away all of the wrongness.
That righted what he was sure would never be fixed — himself.
“From my side of the curtain?” MJ had said, when he had asked her how she saw him; before she had even really known who he was. “A really good guy. Who might just be changing.”
It had almost made him laugh, then.
And it still did — until he really did.
He would have to thank her and Jean, someday. And May, the next time he went to bring her flowers.
Without their words to talk sense into him, the inhibitor would’ve stayed in place — and he would’ve stayed just as wrong as he’d always been.
It had started late one night, when Peter swung back into his shitty little apartment feeling like death warmed over.
He hadn’t gotten sick since he’d been bitten, but between the sensory-overload-induced migraines from his newly heightened senses and the nausea that swam in his stomach half the time when he used his organic webs, he hadn’t exactly felt great recently. Accepting and adapting to his new mutations wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, even if it had become easier since he had actually started trying.
That, put on top of his deteriorated mental state after seeing MJ kiss someone else (and why would she want you?, his brain reminded him nastily, why would anyone?), and then having to look her in the face and hear her say she didn’t love him — and that put on top of the gaping bullet wound in his back that had taken all of Jean’s telepathy, half the best surgical team at one of the best hospitals in New York City, and the strength of his own healing factor to fix — meant that he certainly wasn’t in the best shape.
( . . . He was talking to Ned and MJ, though. That, at least, was the single positive keeping him tethered to mental stability.
And Jean was calling him sometimes, asking for advice, or just needing someone to talk to; she had gone upstate, to find more people like them, but she hadn’t lost his number, which he assumed she’d pulled from his mind while she was keeping him alive. Even Frank was a steady presence in his life, and he tried to keep his talks with DeWolff more personable than they had been.
He still felt like shit, most of the time — but he wasn’t completely alone anymore.
That was better than he had been doing for the last four years, at least — where he’d had nothing and no one but May’s gravestone and wilting flowers for company.)
Point being, he already hadn’t been feeling great, for the past few weeks. And even in the past few days, he hadn’t had much of an appetite, and he’d been more tired and groggy than usual — but both he and E.V. had just chalked it up to his mutations, and had left it at that.
But it had still been an outlier when he had been mid-fight with one of Shocker’s old cronies, and had started to feel suddenly feverish, and then sick with nausea, and then — just as he’d webbed up the guy and swung to debrief with DeWolff — he had actually gotten sick, barely managing to lift his mask in time before vomiting in a gutter.
She had sternly told him to go home, and take more time, and you said you were gonna be better about this, Spider-Man — and he had acquiesced, head spinning, and swung his way home, only hitting a couple signposts as he went.
And then he had stumbled into his apartment and looked into his smudged little bathroom mirror — only to blanch in horror at the paleness of his skin, stark white and scarily drained of any and all color.
Peter squinted at his reflection, stomach turning over uncomfortably. He had wriggled out of his suit, left shivering in his boxers and binder; he had become accustomed to a constant sort of chill since the mutations had begun wracking his body weeks ago, so he paid it no attention as he surveyed his appearance that could really only be described as sickly.
He did pay it attention, however, when the chill spiked, seizing his body and making him hunch in on himself with the shock of it, teeth chattering, goosebumps bursting across his flesh and making him shake and shudder.
“E.V.?” Peter choked out. He clung to the edge of the sink until it started to crack underneath his grip, staring into the mirror, eyes blown wide and scared as black oozed from the irises and overtook the sclera, swallowing his gaze in obsidian.
He was so cold; he felt as though he were freezing from the inside out, his breaths going short and choppy.
“Your arachnid hormone levels appear to be in a rapid state of growth,” E.V. said, sounding as alarmed as an A.I. possibly could. “I am detecting a significant increase in your cellular activity.”
“What should I —,” He started, then cut himself off with a strangled wheeze.
He collapsed to his knees and cried out, hoarse and afraid, as the freezing cold feeling was replaced with a sudden fire, crawling over his skin and digging into him like the teeth of a thousand vengeful ants. The fire burned and itched, but he was too weak to lift a hand and scratch at even an inch of the searing pain in his skin.
E.V. was saying something, but there was a ringing in his ears, and his vision was blacking out — and then, there was nothing but his own pained whimper, and then that was gone, too.
When Peter dragged himself back into consciousness, all he was cognizant enough to process was just how different he felt from how he had felt when he’d passed out.
There was some sort of refreshed, renewed feeling about him; he didn’t feel sick at all, not too cold or too hot, his entire state of being in some sort of equilibrium.
The feeling of wrongness he had been so accustomed to for years and years felt . . . muted, somehow. Muffled.
(It felt entirely gone, if he was being honest with himself — but even in such a state, half-conscious and disoriented, he didn’t want to give himself what felt like such a false hope.)
Peter cracked his eyes open and was relieved to find that, while he was cocooned all the way around in his own webs like he had been the last time he’d passed out from a surge in his mutations, he was not hanging off the side of his building in his underclothes; just the ceiling of his apartment, this time. And despite that he consciously knew his apartment was cold from the broken radiator, he still felt that contented feeling of peace and equilibrium that would’ve puzzled him, if he had had enough wherewithal in the moment to be puzzled.
His head felt heavy and calm, as though he were drunk off something, as he crawled out of the cocoon and flopped down on the couch where he slept (on the nights when he slept at all, and wasn’t patrolling the streets of New York City — so few and far between), wayward strands of spiderweb falling all around him, tickling over his skin in an almost soothing, familiar way.
Peter found himself unable to think straight — or really, to think at all — as he closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around himself with a peaceful sigh. All he knew for certain was that he felt good, he felt right, and so he just lay there, breathing slowly in and out, until he eventually gathered the wherewithal to mumble, “E.V.?”
“I am here, Peter,” the A.I. responded immediately, sounding relieved, or maybe that was just the fuzziness in his head.“You appear to have undergone a significant transformation as a result of your mutation and heightened arachnid hormone levels.”
“Huh?” Peter mumbled, reaching up a heavy hand to rub at his eyes. “Transformation?”
“Molting,” E.V. said promptly. “Your body has . . . renewed itself into a more suitable state in accordance with your well-being.”
Peter blinked his eyes back open, his arms tightening their grip on his body as his soothing self-hug turned into a vice-like grip.
He registered, for the first time since crawling from his cocoon, that he was naked.
And his body was —
Different.
He sat up with a jolt, the heavy fog around his mind dissipating all at once.
Peter stared down at himself, mouth hanging open, as tears of shock and joy burned at his eyes.
“Oh my God,” he choked out, his gaze wide with disbelief.
His chest was bare — bare, and flat, but not from tape or a binder; rather, there were toned pecs where his breasts had been. He drew a trembling hand down his torso, blinking back his tears, and then, feeling as though he were in a dream, he tentatively sat up further to look between his legs — nearly passing out from shock when he saw —
Well, something that certainly hadn’t been there before.
“The results of your body scan show that your primary and secondary sex characteristics have been altered to a male-typical configuration,” E.V. informed him, somehow sounding just as stunned as Peter felt, though maybe he was just projecting; he could barely hear her through the ringing in his ears, anyway. "Your genetic material has undergone extensive alteration consistent with the phenotypic changes. I am detecting no remaining indication of your previous chromosomal configuration."
“I don’t — I don’t understand,” Peter whispered, feeling lightheaded, as though he were floating on air. He looked up, back at the split cocoon, and choked on a gasp, eyes bugging out in shock.
He was up there.
Well — not really, but — there was a near-opaque outline of his body hanging from where he had crawled out of, with a seam running down its middle, giving it the eerie look of some sort of ghost.
It looked like he had looked before — before this — with all the parts that had felt so wrong.
All the parts that he no longer had.
“Molting,” Peter whispered, his stomach turning over with something so very far from dread.
“Molting,” E.V. confirmed. “It was likely triggered by recent overt stress in relation to your sexual characteristics. Have you experienced —,”
“Yeah — yes,” Peter interrupted hurriedly, because he had; because seeing MJ with another man had reminded him of what he was, and what he wasn’t, and how, even if he did rekindle anything with her, maybe she wouldn’t want him because — because —
(“People like us don’t get to live a normal life.”)
“Is this — permanent?” He croaked out, pushing Jean’s voice away and squeezing his hands into fists, still staring up at the — well, the exuviae above him. The thought made his stomach turn over; as incredible as this all seemed, the fact that he had molted at all still made him feel a little squeamish. He had long gotten over his arachniphobia, but this was just — on a different level.
Regardless, he still felt joy, bubbling up in his chest as the A.I. responded.
“It is likely,” E.V. said, “given how extensively the change has occurred throughout even your chromosomes and DNA.”
“What if I put on the inhibitor?” Peter asked, despite already knowing the answer. As soon as the fog in his mind had cleared, it had started working rapidly, turning over everything it knew to make sense of this new development. And so he already knew it was, even as E.V. replied:
“The inhibitor only suppresses what is occurring. This has already occurred.”
“Oh my God,” he mumbled again, feeling shaky with shock and disbelief. “Oh, my God.”
Peter heaved himself up to his feet and stumbled over to the grimy, smudged bathroom mirror that he almost always tried so hard to avoid looking into. He gripped the edge of the sink — fingers carefully avoiding the cracks fissured into it, from how hard he had grabbed onto it before he’d passed out, so afraid of what was happening, not knowing that this was everything — and just stared.
He had taken testosterone for a couple of years, through Tony and Pepper, and had been making his own (on-and-off, whenever he could spare some of his paycheck for the necessary compounds) for the past three. Though inconsistent, it had given him some changes; namely, his voice had dropped somewhat, and his face had gotten a little less soft, and his monthly cycle had stopped. And that was all great — but it had never been enough.
This —
This was more than.
His face was sharper, his jaw broader, his Adam’s apple visible when he swallowed tightly with disbelief. His brows were more pronounced, his shoulders wider, his hands bigger and more vascular where they were digging into the edges of the sink. He lifted one to drag a palm down his face, feeling with amazement along the edges of his cheekbones, and the line of his curly hair, and the roughness of his freckled skin.
He moved his hand lower, to trace down his chest once more as though mesmerized — then lower still, until he was cupping his dick in his palm, the feeling of it making his heart leap rather than the way it had sunk, whenever he had touched (or even looked at, or even thought about) what had been between his legs before.
“Okay,” Peter breathed out, “okay. Okay.”
He lifted his hand, and pressed his blunt nails deep into his palm.
It hurt.
Not a dream, then. This was real.
This was real.
Peter pulled his gaze back up to look in the mirror. He stared, and then he laughed — and laughed, and laughed, until tears streamed down his face.
He knew, he understood, that May had been right; that as different as he was, there were still people who loved him for him. May had; MJ and Ned had; Tony had. Just because he had been so alone for four years didn’t negate the life he had spent with people who had loved and cared about him, despite the way he had felt about himself.
But because of that — because of how he had felt about himself — he had only understood it. He hadn’t really believed it.
If only May could see him now.
She couldn’t, of course; and this didn’t change anything about his life, not really. May and Tony were still dead; he was still forgotten by his friends, by the woman he loved; he still, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist at all. There were still plenty of people out there who hated Spider-Man, and wanted him dead. There were still plenty of problems for Peter Parker — his job, and rent, and all his tech that he had barely scraped together dumpster-diving and pressing pennies.
But at least now . . . he felt right.
“I need to . . . clean this place up,” Peter managed to say aloud, after pulling himself together. He cleaned his hands and splashed his face with water, washing away his tears. He stumbled to the small dresser in the corner of the apartment, pulling out a pair of boxers and sweatpants. “E.V., can you, um — take — new measurements? I need — my suit, it should be altered — and, and — how long was I passed out for, anyway?”
“12 hours,” E.V. said. “It is currently 9:07 in the morning on Wednesday, March 14th, 2029. You received sixty-two crime notifications, but they were forwarded to Detective DeWolff along with your message to send for when you are unable to offer assistance. I will begin the process of recording your new measurements now.”
“Okay,” Peter repeated, only half-listening; far too pre-occupied with how his boxers fit him so snugly, and how the sweatpants that had been baggy on him before to hide the curves of his hips could now be worn like a second skin, perfectly comfortable and just another thing that was right. “Okay.”
After taking another moment to pull himself together all over again, he set out dragging the molted shell of himself down from the ceiling.
It was strange — seeing himself like that.
Peter crouched beside it, staring. It was almost translucent up close, but still with enough form to make out his old face staring blankly up at him, distorted but recognizable.
It looked exactly like him (or rather, how he used to look), save for the seam down the middle. The shape of his face was there; the familiar slope of his nose, the long limbs, the narrow waist he’d spent years learning how to hide beneath clothes — even in the boxy, self-made seams of his suit, despite how tight-fitting it was. Even the hair was there, curling up against the scalp in the same messy way it usually did.
It looked exactly like him — but it wasn’t him. It never would be, ever again.
And, in a way — it never really had been.
Peter reached out and pressed his fingertip against its cheek; the shed material gave beneath the pressure, and he recoiled, lip twitching, gaze roving over its body, which was wrinkled and folded in on itself like a crumpled, off-color paper bag.
“That’s disgusting,” he muttered — not just referring to the feel of it, but more referring to the mantra that had played in his mind for years and years, ever since puberty had ravaged his body like a starving wolf, gnawing on him every fucking day all while everyone around him went on with their normal lives, not knowing (or not caring, or just watching helplessly) that he was dragging around a rabid animal, clinging to his ankle with deadly teeth.
He remembered sobbing to May that he was wrong; he remembered her holding him close, and telling him that it was going to be okay, that she still loved him (“There is no ‘still’,” she had whispered to him, “I love you no matter what — Peter.”).
That she was sad that he couldn’t love himself — but he never could, and he never had.
Maybe that would change, now.
His eyes drifted downward; he stared pointedly at the chest of the shed skin, then down to between its legs. He swallowed painfully, feeling his Adam’s apple jump in his throat.
He’d spent years avoiding looking at those particular parts of himself for too long. Even after binding, even after packing — it was never enough. It had never even been close.
But he had learned how to exist without really seeing any of it. He’d learned which clothes hid his shape, hid his parts, best; he’d learned which angles to avoid in mirrors, how to shower without letting his eyes linger. He’d learned how to engineer his suits so that the world saw Spider-Man — and nothing else. Nobody else.
Peter Parker had spent years just being Spider-Man, because Peter Parker’s body had been empty for far longer than just now; lying as a molted skin on the floor of his apartment, surrounded by tendrils of spiderweb and crumpled up like a dirty sheet.
He had never felt like he was looking at himself, when he saw that body — but now, he really wasn’t. It was just the shell it always had been; only without that hollow, dead-eyed stare of his own that he had been met with whenever he’d worked up the courage to look in his reflection.
That body had disgusted him.
But . . .
It had still been his, for twenty-two years.
It had carried him through everything; through childhood, and losing his parents, and enduring puberty, and becoming Spider-Man, and dying and coming back only to be forgotten again, and having to learn how to live through that. May had hugged that body; MJ had kissed those lips; Ned had met that palm in his own in their long-worn handshake, too many times to count.
Peter blinked, tears burning in his eyes.
“I didn’t hate you,” he whispered, and he reached back out to gingerly stroke over the molted cheek. This time, he felt no disgust; only sorrow, and blooming gratefulness, even as the words sounded ridiculous in the empty apartment, and he looked back at the face staring sightlessly up at him. "I hated being stuck in you."
He sighed, and sat back on his heels, running a hand through his own curly hair. He paused after a moment, holding out his palms in front of him; turning his hands over, just looking at them, observing just his hands closer than he’d ever purposefully looked at a part of his body before.
They were larger than before. The fingers were longer, the knuckles more pronounced, the veins standing out beneath his skin. He flexed them experimentally, and felt a slow smile creeping over his face, the sense of sorrow and musing trickling away into aching relief.
They felt right, because everything did, because everything was — because he was.
Peter took a few moments to carefully contain the shed skin of his old body — he folded it just as he would one of his suits (it tore a little around its translucent edges, which made him profoundly uncomfortable, but he soldiered on) and pressed it away for later study, because curiosity always did get the better of him — then stood and glanced, as though transfixed, towards the mirror again. Just — looking.
His shoulders, his chest, his waist, his face . . . his proportions had all changed. Not dramatically — not enough that someone who didn’t know him (so, everyone, really) would be able to identify much of a difference at all — but enough for him to notice. He even stood differently — moved differently, as he made his way through the small space of his apartment. Even the way he held himself felt natural, in a newfound sort of way that he just couldn’t explain.
If the mutations had just led with this, he thought, somewhat sullenly, maybe the rest of it would’ve been a little easier to stomach.
As though to prove that thought to himself, Peter held his wrists up to eye level, and gave one an experimental flick — and still had to swallow back a gag at the sight of the organic webs oozing from his spinneret.
“Nope,” he muttered aloud, making a face. “Definitely not.”
He did startle, a little, at the sound of his voice. He hadn’t noticed until then, but it sounded just slightly different; it had already dropped from the hormones he’d taken before, and the ones he’d manufactured — but there was still a noticeable change in cadence, and in the way it felt to speak.
He cleared his throat, trailing a hand across his collarbone. “Hello,” he said, more to his reflection in the mirror than anyone else.
“Hello, Peter,” E.V. replied promptly, making him jump. “I am seventy-nine percent done with updating your measurements. Do you require my assistance?”
“No, thanks, E,” Peter responded distractedly, “just keep an eye on my — my body, okay? And my vitals, and everything. Just in case anything starts going all weird.”
E.V. gave her assent, then quieted; Peter rubbed his hand down the line of his throat, feeling the curve of his Adam’s apple, one corner of his mouth twitching up.
He sounded like himself.
He had always deepened his voice, as Spider-Man, even after it had dropped naturally from the testosterone. Because Spider-Man had been an escape for Peter Parker — in more ways than one. But now . . .
“Are you Peter Parker, or are you Spider-Man?” Jean had asked.
“I’m both”, he had told her.
Now — he really could be.
Peter looked down at his chest again, running his palms down the flat planes of his torso. He felt no instinctive urge to pull away; no sudden, but expected, spike of discomfort — no thought of what shirt he would need to put on or how the fabric would fall over him, or how he could manufacture his suit so that no one would see the man (or lack thereof, he’d always thought bitterly of himself) beneath the mask.
He just felt . . . skin.
Just his skin. Just his body.
Just him.
There were things that Peter had spent so long thinking of impossible, that he’d stopped letting himself want them. He had accepted that he was just stuck like that forever; ‘in the wrong body’, with nothing but his alter-ego for a refuge, and even then, barely just. He had accepted that he was alone, and that he always would be, now.
But neither of those things were true anymore, were they?
As though reading his thoughts, his phone gave three sudden, weak dings; he fished it out from between two couch cushions, hurrying to plug it into the charger on his workspace (which only worked at an angle, because it was one of those things that he’d bought at a convenience store for cheap years ago and that he hadn’t gotten around to replacing yet, but he had altered it to charge his phone quicker) before opening his messages.
He had several missed ones — from Ned, and DeWolff, and Mr. Delmar, and —
MJ (9:34 AM): You down for game night at me and Ned’s today?
MJ (9:35 AM): I know he already texted you, but figured I would too, just so you know you’re wanted by both of us here.
MJ (9:35 AM): Just feel like that’s something you should know, you know?
Peter blinked harshly, scrubbing tears from his eyes.
Wanted.
He stared at the word for a long moment, chest aching.
He had spent so long thinking that he was fundamentally unlovable — that even if anyone did remember him, he had something so inherently wrong about him that it was impossible that anyone could care about him. That had been harder to feel when he had had Tony, and May, and Ned, and MJ — but when they had all forgotten, it hadn’t taken long for him to forget, too.
For him to forget everything May had told him.
How much she loved him.
How much they all did.
But he had spent years thinking that if he could just become someone else entirely, if he could just be Spider-Man — then maybe, maybe, he could escape the parts of himself that he loathed so deeply.
But that had only ever made him worse and worse — nearly to the point of self-destruction.
“No wonder the spider’s trying to swallow up the man”, Jean had said — but then MJ, who had always seen him so clearly, had reminded him that all he was doing was changing, and, he was realizing now, that was not wrong at all, but right.
Maybe he could’ve gotten there eventually, even without this. Maybe he could’ve learned to live with the body he’d had — and maybe, given enough time and enough love and enough people willing to remind him that he was more than the shape he inhabited (maybe if he had had more time with May, more time with Tony, more time with MJ and Ned when they remembered more than just what they knew of him now), he could have found some peace with it.
But this — this made everything easier. Even something as simple as breathing, now, made him feel so . . .
So at home in his own skin.
And wasn’t that a funny feeling.
His body, for the first time, wasn’t something he had to make peace with; it was just . . . his.
(He supposed that, in the end, Jean had been right.
"That life is over."
But now . . . he could rebuild it. He could start living, all over again, in the way he had always wanted.)
“Peter?”
E.V.’s voice jolted him from his reverie, and Peter looked up from where he’d sat down heavily on the couch, phone in his hand, open to MJ’s messages. He cleared his throat, and wiped away the tears that had fallen down his cheeks without him even noticing.
“I’m fine,” he croaked out, recognizing the A.I.’s tone. “Really, I am.”
“Good,” E.V. said in reply, “your emotional state does seem to be at a more regulated level.” Then, without giving him a chance to fully process that (even his emotional state was more balanced, though he supposed that that shouldn’t really come as a massive surprise), she continued: “I have completed your updated measurements. If you place your suit into the printer, I can adjust it accordingly for you.”
Peter did, then picked his phone back up as the printer began whirring away, undoing and redoing stitches and seams. He replied to Ned — who had texted him earlier about the same thing; game night was becoming something of a weekly occurrence for the three of them, because after explaining everything to Ned, all rooted in why he could do a handshake that he could not remember, Peter had been making an effort to bear himself to others for the first time in four years. Mercifully, Ned and MJ were making an effort, too; they wanted him there, and wasn’t that, too, a funny feeling.
Then, he shot a quick message to DeWolff — that he was fine and had just been a little under the weather, but that he would be back out again today, And really I am fine, I don’t need a lecture, you know you can trust me — and one to Mr. Delmar, that he was sorry he’d missed his shift that morning but he’d make it up to him. He was lucky the man had so much patience with him.
Finally, he swiped back to MJ’s contact, thumbs hovering hesitantly over the keyboard as he thought over what to say to her.
She and Ned didn’t know that he was transgender. He wondered, briefly, if he even still thought of himself as that. He had never liked having to call himself trans, because all he'd so desperately wanted was exactly what he had right now — but he supposed that it was just like shedding his old skin. He hadn’t liked it, but it had been a part of him for a long, long time. He shelved that thought for later — that, among other things.
The point was only that they didn’t know. Obviously, they had known when they had known him, before everything. But there had never really been a good time to tell them, now.
Maybe . . . he should.
Maybe he should have, already — it wasn’t like they wouldn’t have been kind about it, accepting about it. He knew them, even if they didn’t fully know him, not yet. But he had been scared, because he had always been scared, because he had never truly taken May’s words to heart until he had found himself not needing them anymore — in the sense that he didn’t feel so wrong anymore, and therefore had nothing to . . . make peace with, in a way.
But even if he had still felt that way, no matter how untrue it was . . . he knew, he knew, that Ned and MJ wouldn’t have cared. They would’ve kept on getting to know him regardless, because he was wanted by them. And he knew, now in hindsight, that it really had just been fear, holding him back from that. From opening up to them completely.
It would feel like a bit of a cop-out, to tell them now — but he also wanted to, because he was filled with so much joy over such a transformation of himself that he couldn’t keep it between him and his A.I. assistant.
“I wish you were here, May,” he whispered to himself, as he typed out a reply to MJ — that he was excited, and that he wanted her to remind him to tell them, later, about something important that had happened. “I really, really wish you were here. I . . .”
“Alterations complete,” E.V. interrupted, and Peter perked up with a small smile, gaze lighting up. He knew already what he was doing after he went on patrol — something he always did, of course, but that he thought would feel different, today. Just like everything did.
“I’ll be right there.”
And when he pulled the suit on — for perhaps the first time in his life — it didn’t feel like a costume he needed, to become someone else; it just felt like a suit.
He was Spider-Man — and he was Peter Parker.
“I’m both”, he had told Jean.
And he was.
Peter flicked out a web, and he swung —
And he swore he felt like he was flying; weightless and unlimited.
Free.
“Hey, May.”
Peter crouched down beside her grave, placing a bundle of bursting blue flowers tenderly on top of it. He drew one of his hands across the front of the granite, tracing her name with his fingertips.
He had been patrolling since he’d left his apartment that morning; he’d returned briefly, to eat some leftover Little Ceaser’s from a few nights before (he hadn’t had an appetite the past few days, but he’d started feeling hungry halfway through the day) and to change into civilian clothes, though he kept his suit in a backpack slung over one shoulder as he had left again to go buy flowers and to take the subway to the church graveyard where May had been laid to rest.
It wouldn’t exactly be a good thing if the general public caught wind of Spider-Man visiting the grave of a widow without any family; it was, he thought, one of the only good things about being forgotten. Peter Parker, in jeans and a hoodie, could very easily fade into obscurity when he wanted to, like every other young man from Queens.
(He remembered his sick sense of relief when Strange had cast that final spell — because even if his people forgot him, at least everyone else did, too. After so much ridicule about not only being Spider-Man, not only being accused of murder and terrorism, but also being turned into a scapegoat for transgender people after J. Jonah Jameson had easily uncovered that information about him . . .
Well, it had been the one relief — of being forgotten.
But he didn’t really need to think about that anymore, did he?)
“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today,” Peter said, huffing out a little laugh and sitting cross-legged in front of the headstone that bore her name and the words she had always lived by and encouraged him to do the same — when you help someone, you help everyone.
“You’d probably think it’s gross, really,” he continued, sighing. “I kinda do, too, but it’s like the organic webs, I guess. The benefits of it make the spider stuff worth it. By a long shot. Especially this.” Peter blinked away a burn in his eyes, his gaze shining. “I’ve been sick the past few days, sort of, but last night, I — I changed. Molting — ecdysis, if you wanna get scientific about it, which you know I always do. And I’m — God, May, I —,”
Peter stopped, and took in a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a moment, bowing his head.
“I’m not stuck anymore,” he whispered. “I’m . . . the way I’ve always wanted to be.”
He quieted for a moment. When he lifted his head again, his expression, and his voice, were somewhat mournful, but his lips were twitching upwards in a grin.
“It’s like, where were these mutations when I first got bit, huh?” Peter joked. “But I wanted to say that . . . this doesn’t mean that I appreciate you any less, for all the stuff you said to me. You really got me through — everything, and — and I know you did your best even when you didn’t understand, even when I didn’t understand . . .” His breath hitched, and he swallowed tightly, with a pursed-lip smile.
“I just miss you so much,” he croaked out, “and I’m so grateful to you, May. And I love you. And I’m sorry I could never love me like you wanted, but — but I think that that’s gonna change, now.”
Peter sat there for another moment, waiting for the ache in his chest to settle. It didn’t — but it wasn’t the same kind of ache as it had always been before, and so he let it stay.
(“You’re beautiful, and the people who love you, we love you not because you’re special, we love you because you’re you”, she had said.
“Never forget that.”)
“You were right, you know, May,” he murmured. “About a lot of things. And I’m sorry that I — I did forget that, for a while. But I won’t anymore. I’ll remember.” Peter bit the inside of his cheek, closing his eyes for a moment.
“I’ll always remember, May. I promise.”
Peter fell quiet, pulling his legs up to his chest and resting his cheek on his knee. He stayed there with her until the sun had started to sink lower in the sky, then stood, brushed the dirt from his pants, and smiled downward, at the flowers he knew she would’ve loved.
“I’ll see you later, May,” he said. “I’ve got game night.”
Peter walked to Ned and MJ’s rather than swinging there like he usually did. He found that he didn’t mind it much; the city was somehow just as beautiful walking the streets as it was swinging between buildings, looking down at it.
And it really was so nice — just fading into obscurity, without worrying every moment about how he looked, and what it meant when peoples’ gazes lingered, and how he walked, how he moved, how he acted. It was as freeing as being in midair, weightless as flying; to exist with such peace of mind, such renewed equilibrium between it and his body.
It was a good feeling.
Almost as good as seeing his friends waving at him from their window, as he rounded their block.
MJ buzzed him into their apartment building, then opened the door for him with a little smile. He was always starstruck by her — some things really never changed — but tried to mute that in his expression, these days, even though she and her ex-boyfriend had broken things off. From the shine in her eyes, he could tell that he hadn’t done a great job.
“Hey,” she said, leaning against the doorframe, crossing her arms across her chest as she gave him a sweeping once-over. “You look different.”
Peter blinked with surprise, and some nervousness. “Good different?” He checked anxiously, fingers tapping a rhythm against his thigh. He blew out a breath of relief when MJ just grinned, rolling her eyes.
“Obviously,” she said, her voice teasing and sardonic but still kind in that way only she could pull off. “Not like I’d invite you in by immediately insulting you to your face, Peter. No, you look — I dunno.” MJ tilted her head; around her neck, the broken Black Dahlia swung. “You look happy.”
“‘Course I’m happy,” he responded, in reflex. “It’s game night. And . . .” Peter returned her grin with a shy one of his own. The feeling of nothing short of jubilation that he’d had all day brimmed in his chest, overflowing into him. “Today was really good.”
“Yeah?” MJ tilted her head, her hair falling around her, framing her face so beautifully that Peter’s heart ached. God, he’d missed her — but, unlike May, he had her again, even if they were still learning what that meant, for now. “That have something to do with that thing you wanted to tell us, that you texted me about? Ned’s been dying to know.”
Peter gazed into her eyes, and he smiled wider as he stepped past her and inside.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
May and Tony were still gone; MJ and Ned still didn’t remember him like they used to. He was still mostly broke, and there were probably ten people actively plotting to kill Spider-Man as Ned set up the Risk game board inside the apartment.
Everything wasn’t perfect.
But at least he felt right.
He was here, with two people who wanted him there.
He was here, in a body that he didn’t need to make peace with, but that he could just exist in.
And he knew without knowing that they would be happy for him about it.
He knew — because May always had been right.