Summary: Becoming Spiderman is no easy feat for Peter Parker. His whole body has to reinvent itself, and it’s an excruciating process for a skinny, frightened fourteen-year-old kid from Queens.
Characters: Peter Parker, May Parker
Warning: Blood, illness, and a little profanity.
This fic can also be found on FFN and AO3.
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Peter woke up with a jerk; his stomach felt like someone was stabbing it repeatedly with a jagged blade, and his entire body was on fire. Peeling off his sweat-soaked shirt, he crawled into the bathroom in only his boxers, lying against the cold tile for some relief against the relentless heat. The spider bite on his hand bristled and then flared with pain, making him gasp in alarm.
He remembered stumbling back home after the field trip, dizzy and confused; he’d fallen into his bed afterward. He knew that Aunt May had left for a night shift, and she wouldn’t be back for at least four o’clock. He curled in on himself, whimpering and moaning, on the floor of his bathroom. Sweat poured down his forehead, and the pain only worsened, spreading from his stomach outward, to his chest, head, arms, and legs.
Peter had never felt pain like this before.
At one point, he remembered screaming, but he could barely hear anymore. His sight and hearing were cloudy now, as though someone had wrapped his head in cloth, and there was a horrible, bitter taste in his mouth, like he’d swallowed a thousand spiders.
He didn’t know how much time was passing; it could have been a few minutes or a few hours. He clung to the porcelain rim of the toilet, heaving weakly into it. Tears trickled down his cheeks, and he cried, for the first time in a long time, for his parents. He wished they were here, to tell him everything was going to be okay and he would be fine.
But there was no one here but Peter. Once the nausea finally subsided, then came the headaches, splitting his skull with a white-hot axe. Curled up on the floor of his bathroom, he couldn’t stop the tears from coming now, spilling from him as though they could prevent the avalanche of pain currently wracking his brain. And light started to hurt, too; eventually, the light bothered him so much that he had to crawl to the other side of the bathroom on his hands and knees just to turn it off. The darkness provided some relief, but then the blazing heat returned, washing over him in waves of fire ants marching over his skin. He cried and cried and threw up again. When one pain was gone, another seemed to take its place, sending him into a whole new kind of misery.
Peter wondered if he was going to die this way: on the floor of his bathroom, surrounded by his own vomit. He prayed that Aunt May would come home soon, because she always made everything better. Something rose in his throat; thinking he was about to throw up again, his frail body lunged for the toilet, scrambling to grip each side, but instead he coughed uncontrollably. Spitting up into the toilet, he felt something hot and wet drip down his chin. When he forced his eyes open again, his nerve endings protesting violently against the action, he saw red splattered against white.
He wished he could pass out, just so he wouldn’t have to experience this level of absolute physical torture. It’s just the flu, he thought, over and over again. It’s just the flu. I’ll get over it. I’ll be fine. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was anything but fine.
Eventually, he was on the floor again, lying with his back against the wall. He’d stopped throwing up, at least, for he had nothing left to bring back up. However, just as the agony in his torso faded, his muscles began to spasm, so much so that he couldn’t cling to the toilet anymore.
Suddenly, he couldn’t feel his fingers. The odd feeling of numbness crept up his arm with a violent shiver; Peter have never felt so scared in his entire life. He slid across the floor, dragging himself towards the other side of the bathroom. Maybe then he could reach the phone… But then his feet went numb, too, and the fire started again.
Peter wished he was dead.
Peter didn’t know how long it had been, but finally, he could feel life trickle back into his body, one cell at a time. He was lying on his stomach on the bathroom floor, and everything went into laser-sharp focus. He could feel every hair on his body stand up straight in his shock, and the pain ebbed until he could only sense this perpetual state of extreme attention. His skin felt sticky, almost clammy, but the intense waves of heat were gone. He climbed shakily to his feet, holding onto the sink for support.
He felt...different. It was like he could sense everything around him, all at once, and it hurt. His eyes felt like they were going to explode. He squinted to narrow his focus, and the pain dulled. He glanced from one thing to another, examining everything with extreme precision: the blood spots on the front of his shirt, the beads of sweat on his skin, the dirt on the floor. He could see everything.
When he looked up, into the mirror, he realized how much of a toll it had taken on him. His eyes were horribly bloodshot, feeling almost swollen in their sockets, and red trickled from the corner of each eye in mimicry of tears. There was blood coming from his ears, too, now sliding down the side of his neck.
Peter had never seen so much blood before.
It was red, brighter than he’d expected against his pale skin, and everywhere. On his face, on his hands, on the bathroom floor… He wanted to wipe it away, but currently he didn’t possess the strength to. This… Whatever this was… It had sapped every bit of energy from his fourteen-year-old body.
He staggered out of the bathroom, bracing himself against the wall. He was starving. It was still dark outside, he noticed, and when he glanced at the clock he realized it had been eight hours since he had first fallen asleep in his room. He stumbled into the kitchen, flung open the fridge, and gathered everything he could find, wolfing down takeout box after takeout box before he even knew what was inside.
After he ate, he limped back to his room, his limbs still shaky from the whole experience. Every inch of his body ached, whining with protest as he moved. What had just happened to him? The flu didn’t make someone feel like this. He collapsed onto his bed, exhausted yet still buzzing with energy. Whatever it was surging beneath his skin… This wasn’t normal.
Peter closed his eyes, blocking out his super-focus, and hoped that this strange feeling would be gone in the morning.
Before he could even try to sleep, however, he heard Aunt May’s key enter the lock all the way from his room with a soft click. May always tried to sneak in so she wouldn’t wake him, but today, his senses wouldn’t let him ignore her presence, even though she was tiptoeing inside. He stayed curled up in a ball on his bed, hoping his aunt would just want to go to sleep and leave him alone, but she didn’t. Instead, she went into the bathroom, and it was only when Aunt May, panicked, exclaimed, “What the fuck?” that Peter realized that the mess he had made in the bathroom was still there. All the blood and vomit in there was still… Fuck, he thought.
“Peter!” she shouted; her voice was a frightening combination of terror and hysteria. “Peter! Where are—” She burst through his door, her face the epitome of fear. “Peter!” She rushed to his side, immediately wrapping her arms around him in a gentle hug. “You okay, kiddo?” Her voice was still shaking. “What happened in the bathroom? What happened to you?” She was touching the side of his face now, testing for fever, but finding only dried bloodstains and clammy skin.
Peter only shook his head and clung to her as scared, fourteen-year-old kids did, sobbing, “I d-don’t kn-know, I don’t know!”
Startled, Aunt May pulled him into her arms, sitting on the bed with him and smoothing his hair away from his forehead. “It’ll be okay,” she promised, holding him to her. “Don’t worry, kiddo, you’ll be okay.” She rubbed his back in slow circles, shushing him like she did when he was little, murmuring softly. “You’re gonna be okay.”
So Peter gripped her tightly and cried, believing every word she said.
