One and Two and Three
Two fingers.
Two fingers is all it would take.
Peter stands in front of the toilet, hands shaking and his heart rabbiting in his chest. He doesn't know how he got here, his hands are sweating and maybe shaking a little and he just wants to get this over with so he can go back to his room and finally sleep.
He knows he’s eaten too much today, May had gotten paid the day before so as a treat to the both of them they went downtown a couple of hours ago to eat at the old Chinese buffet where he lost his 4th tooth.
He knew he should have stopped a plate and a half in, but May was softer and happier than normal, her eyes bright and her posture relaxed with the atmosphere. So, he let himself get lost in the shine in her eyes and their laughter. By the time they were tired out and ready to go home, Peter had eaten four plates in the span of two hours.
He’s done it before.
He’s bent over the same porcelain bowl, in the same bathroom, in the same dinky apartment more times than he could count, but this time felt different.
Wouldn't this be a waste? They're celebrating, he shouldn't be ungrateful, he needs to get himself together and go the fuck to sleep.
But the thing is Peter can feel it.
He can feel the food solidifying inside himself, weighing him down, and filling him out.
He knows it's unreasonable, is it? He knows that’s not how calories actually work, it’s not right? He knows, he knows he's being stupid but using logic isn’t working for him right now.
He can do this right? It’s okay, he's fine, just one last time and he won’t do it again.
Is what Peter tells himself before he turns the shower on and kneels.
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‘One last time’ ends up being two, then three, then four, and after that time with the spaghetti acid burning his throat on the way up, he stopped keeping count.
He thinks he looks smaller, his collar bones are more defined and his ribs poke a little more but it's nothing to write home about.
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The day he gets bitten by a spider is probably, single-handedly, the best day of his life. After the barfing, sweating, and shivering that is. He feels stronger and lighter and like he's on cloud nine, that he could run a million miles and still have enough stamina to do another round without stopping.
A week after he gets his powers, Peter goes down the street to Ms. Dulwin's thrift store that smells like old cats and buys a mismatched jogging set with goggles that turn him into someone else. It’s freeing, the cycle of swinging and hitting and getting back up over and over and over until his head is clear and the thrumming under his skin stops and he doesn't feel like he needs to bash his head in.
May is getting worried, May is always worried but it’s hard for him to heal himself when he’s still puking up all the shit he eats. And the thing is, Peter gets it. He's the only family she’s got now and she wants to keep him healthy and yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. But Peter is also running on four hours of sleep, there's a buzzing in the back of his head and it's hard to be rational on an empty stomach. So they fight.
It’s ugly and loud, Mays sitting at the table, Peter hovering a couple of feet to the left of her with his backpack still around his shoulders, his brows furrowed and fingers pressing in on himself so hard his palms bleed. It doesn't last long but words are said, things involving Ben and things none of them want to think about.
Peter goes to bed that night with a clouded head and the sound of his own shuttered breathing in his ears.
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It’s Three weeks after becoming Spider-Man, and Two after the fight with his aunt, when he gets asked a question.
“Is it ever too much?”
He’s on a roof, in his makeshift suit with scrapes on the knees and there's a girl sitting on the ledge whose head is craned around to face him. Spider-Man's heart is beating so fast he’s sure he’s about to have a stroke in front of this girl and probably give her another reason to kill herself.
“I,” He has to stop and think then, about what he's actually going to say to this stranger.
About the sleepless nights or when his knees get cold and go numb when he kneels for too long, or how he’s failing most of his classes and in danger of losing his scholarship to a kid who actually has a future.
Instead of saying any of those things, he crosses the short distance and joins her on the edge, sticking his feet to the bricks just in case.
Out of the corner of his left eye, he can see the girl, her hair is curly, it falls in waves around her shoulders. Her face is slim and sad, eyes wet and the brown of them warped by the lights down below.
“Yeah”
And that's all that's spoken for a while, He’s gripping the concrete ledge so hard that he can feel it giving under him.
“I want to die” Is what the girl says to him, he’s not sure why she said it because yes, he thinks, that fact is very very apparent at the moment as her feet swing a good 100ft above a corner street.
But well, Peter knows what she's feeling, you want it all to end so bad that it’s overwhelming and unbelievable. Hard to swallow and no matter how hard you think or voice the matter nothing is enough to shake the thought.
“Do you?” Is what Peter says to her.
And he knows why, because he knows what she's thinking. She's thinking about the people who’ll miss her when she's gone, thinking about watching people laugh or hearing her favorite song in the grocery store.
Peter ends up taking the girl home, a hopeful look in her eye and a small smile on her lips.
It’s four weeks after becoming Spider-Man, and three after the fight with his aunt when Peter turns on the morning news on a Monday when he finds out she killed herself. Nothing about how, or why, or where but she's gone and he had a chance to stop it.