It was…awkward to say the least.
After Tony and Peter’s fight, Peter just went up to his room. Nothing else….eventful had really happened, and so Peter didn’t think much of it. After all, the next day was his school field trip to Oscorp, and he’d always wanted to be in a real lab before.
He was dreading seeing Harley, but he hoped that maybe, just maybe, his brother would ignore him like he always did.
Of course, nothing ever went the way he wanted to.
Peter had sat on the bus with his best friend, Ned. But as soon as the bus came to a stop outside Oscorp, he saw Harley turn around and stare him dead in the eyes.
“Hey, uh, Peter?” Ned asked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Peter, you don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to,” Ned warned.
Peter shrugged, “Might as well see what he wants”
As everyone unloaded off the bus, Harley took his chance.
They were following a tour guide through each of the labs, and though Peter tried his hardest to tune out Harley, it didn’t really work.
“You had no right to say that to dad! You don’t know what he’s been through– he’s been holed up in his lab since!”
“I’m trying to listen to the tour” Peter responded curtly.
“And I'm trying to talk to you!”
“Don’t you get it, Harley?” Peter turned to him, “Dad didn’t love me the way he loved you. He didn’t care about me the way he cared about you. None of them did”
“I’m sorry?”
“Look, Harley. I don’t know what it is, but he never liked me, okay? He never had me down at his lab, he didn’t come to my decathlon competitions, he didn’t–”
“Excuse me, please don’t talk during the tour,” said the guide.
“Sorry” they both responded.
“The family you had and the family I had are very different, so don’t try and act like I'm the ungrateful one,” Peter whispered.
With that, Peter went back to Ned, and they both fawned over the complicated machines and the complex science experiments. However, once glance towards Harley, Peter could tell that Harley saw everything in a whole new light.
Peter really didn’t give a damn, Harley wasn’t really his brother anyway. He had always looked down on Peter, though he was better than him, and who knows, maybe he was. Maybe Harley Stark was better than Peter Stark, but that didn’t give Harley the excuse to act like it.
Harley was always snide when talking to Peter as if he was something below him. One time, Harley was having trouble with his homework. Peter took all AP classes and had straight As in all of them. Harley took regular classes, and though he had good grades, he still had a couple Bs in some classes. Peter had recognized the homework, he had done it himself when he still learned regular classes.
“Hey, do you need help? I’ve done that wo–”
“Why would I need help from you of all people? Last time I checked, you had straight Cs” Harley scoffed.
“Yeah but I got my grades up, I can help you if you just–”
“Peter, stop trying to annoy your brother when he’s doing his work. You can’t be jealous that he has better grades than you” Tony butted in.
“I wasn’t trying to annoy him, just–”
“Harley worked for his grades. Maybe if you were a little more like him, you could have the same grades as him. I expect a lot better from you.”
“But–”
“No. Buts. Go back to your room, and stop trying to drag your brother down.”
Peter silently went back to his room that day, ranting to Ned over facetime instead of doing his own work.
When he was with the Avengers, it was worse.
“Hey, Harley, sorry to bother you but have you seen my math textbook? I really can’t find it and I need it–”
“Ah, I’m sorry Peter I may have..uh”
“What do you mean ‘uh’?”
Peter was on the common floor with Harley, but the other Avengers were there too. Natasha and Rhodey were on the couch, watching some T.V show or another. Steve and Bruce were playing a card game at their feet, clearly uninterested in whatever they were watching.
“Well, me and Dad were down at the lab and one of the tables wasn’t leveled properly. I- uh, kinda saw your textbook in your bag when you came in so I went up and took it out”
“You went into my bag, to get my textbook, so you could level a table? You didn’t even ask me!” Peter protested.
“Hey now,” Rhodey started from his place on the couch, “Harley said sorry. There’s no reason to overreact, Peter.”
“Fine, you know what– Harley, just give it back. I need it”
“Yeah, about that. Me and Dad were messing around and something kinda…blew up? It destroyed the textbook, sorry”
“Harley! I need that for class! What were you thinking–”
“Hey! Peter, that is enough out of you!” Bruce piped up.
“I need that textbook for class! I also need it to finish my homework!”
“Alright, alright,” Steve said, “Harley, give him your textbook”
“What?” Harley protested.
“I’m sorry, but that won’t work. Harley takes regular classes, I take AP classes”
“You know what, Peter? This doesn’t seem like that big a deal, can’t you just go back to your room and ask the school for another one” Rhodey said.
“And on the note of ‘not a big deal,” said Pepper, who had just walked into the room, “Harley, with the rate you and your father are blowing things up, we might not have a tower by the end of the month!”
“Oh come on Pepper, everyone blew a couple things up as a kid,” said Natasha with a smirk.
At that point, Peter just went to his room.
He was dragged out of his thoughts by a sharp pain in his side.
“Dude…look at that,” said Ned, astonished
He was pointed to a small window on the wall to the right of them. The wall also had a door that creaked open ever so slightly. The blinds were sealed shut, and upon closer inspection, it seemed that the window and door led to another room. However, through the small creak in the door, Peter could see a strange…well he didn’t even know what he was seeing.
As the tour group was about to move on, Peter couldn’t help but wonder what was in that room.
“Hey Ned, cover for me?” He asked
“Sure, but be careful”
Peter nodded before, sneaking away from the group.
--------------------------
He could have sworn he was dying.
It was the spider that bit him at Oscorp, he knew it. He felt nauseous, his head was spinning. He couldn’t tell if he had been lying in his bed for days or for minutes. His vision went blotchy, he was so, so hot, yet cold to the bone. He could have sworn everything was swollen, and he felt like six hundred pound weights were shackled to his body. At the same time, he felt like he was floating, like his organs were floating out of his body, pushing their way through his flesh, ripping through his body. There was a constant ringing in his ears, he could've sworn his eardrums had burst, and everything just hurt.
Was he already dead? Was this hell? Did the demons of the underworld swallow him up already? Was his body found in Oscorp, his name all over news headlines?
And then suddenly, like a breath of fresh air, it just stopped.
He was in perfect health once more, it had all just stopped.
He rolled over, suddenly aware of every fiber on his bed. Every particle of dust was now visible to him, every fiber of clothing, it was almost like a movie. He was seeing it all at once, every single thing. He felt sick once more, not out of pain, but out of the sheer amount of everything.
He could hear everything, the faucet on the 35th-floor women's bathroom dripping, the clack of high heels of concrete a block down, the crying of a baby 7 blocks down. Everything.
He could feel the holes between his blanket, each and every fiber rubbing against each other, he could feel the dust in the air, everything.
He hated it.
It clogged up his mind, sent his head spiraling, what was going on?
He laid on the floor of his room for what felt like hours.
Finally, he got used to it all. Not used to it, per se, he didn’t think he could ever get used to this, but soon, he was finally able to stand up and check his phone without it feeling like the world was ending.
He had dozens of missed calls on his phone from Ned, and a dozen more from Strange. His phone was filled with texts from the two of them, along with a couple more from a girl at school, MJ.
He was about to answer back when he heard voices flow from the common room.
“Tony’s been holed up in his lab forever, god that Peter kid” Bucky scoffed.
“I know, right? He had no right to say that to Tony. Tony’s been nothing but amazing towards the kid, and he just threw it back in his face” added Clint.
“I don’t know, guys. He’s kind of right” to Peter’s surprise, it was Steve who said those words.
“What do you mean?” Natasha asked.
“Have any of us actually spoken to him? Not to scold him, or as a small nicety, like actually spoken to him”
“Peter said that the family he had and the family I had were very different” whispered Harley.
“But was he being dramatic? I’m sorry to say this, but Tony sent him to a good school, gave him a roof over his head, food, the newest technology, everything. That’s more than I had as a kid.” said Clint.
“Peter knew Tony’s relationship with Howard. He said that not because it's true, but because he knew it would hurt Tony.” Natasha stated.
Bruce interjected, “Remember that one time he yelled at Harley for taking his math textbook? It was a simple mistake, and just a textbook, and yet Peter had a whole fit! He had a history of overreacting”
“But was he overreacting? He needed that to get good grades in school” Steve interjected, “he was just some scrawny kid trying to get by”.
Peter couldn’t listen anymore, he couldn’t hear their debate on whether or not he was a good kid. He just couldn't.
He swiped on one of Ned’s missed call notifications, and the call only rang once before he picked up.
“Dude! Are you okay? Where have you been!”
“What?”
“Where have you been??”
“What do you mean?”
“Peter, you left the Oscorp trip early!”
“Yeah I wasn't feeling too good”
“Peter, the Oscrop trip was on Monday! You haven't been to school or spoken to anyone since!”
“What day is it?”
“Peter, it's next Thursday.”
Peter felt like life wasn’t real. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness for ten days?
“When I was in Oscorp, I got bitten by one of the experimental spiders, so I’ve been really sick”
“Man, I'm really sorry. I need to go and help my Lola, but I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Okay, see you.”
“See you soon”
He went to school on Friday and practically broke everything. He called Stephen to explain everything, including how he was now sticky and insanely strong. Strange was, of course, worried, but after an internet deep-dive, he came up with a weird theory.
“Peter, you said you were bitten by a spider at Oscorp?”
“Yeah”
“Was it, by chance, bright blue?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“A division of Oscorp was shut down a while back because their experiments were deemed too dangerous. One of them was gene alteration through the use of radioactive spiders”
If Peter’s phone weren’t literally stuck to his hand, he would have dropped it.
“So you’re saying…what?”
“Think about it, Peter. You’re suddenly insanely strong, sticky, have crazy enhanced senses and you were deathly sick the week after the bite”
“You’re saying…I have superpowers”
Stephen was silent for a moment.
“Well, you know, I’m not saying you don’t”
“What do I do?”
“I mean, you could try–”
“Absolutely not, there is no way in hell I am telling them”
“Peter, you have some very useful resources here and–”
“They would use it to control me”
Stephen just gave him a sigh, before telling him to be careful, before hanging up. Peter gave a soft smile, after all, his father had never told him to be careful. Or showed any concern, really.
His time after school is spent testing out his new powers, as Strange had wizard duties (Strange said he hated when Peter called them wizard duties, but Peter could always see his soft smile whenever he did it).
He went to an empty warehouse, mainly so he wouldn’t do a ton of damage, and then went crazy.
Peter found that he could do some insane shit. Peter threw a slab of concrete across the warehouse-like it was nothing, and after weighing it, he realized that it was just short of 950 pounds. He could lift two of them like it was nothing, which meant he could lift 2000 pounds like it was 2 pounds.
Soon, Peter realized that if he really gained the strength of a spider, it meant he could lift 170 times his body weight. Quickly, he took his calculator out of his bag and did the math.
28,550 pounds.
He could lift up to 28,550 pounds.
That was almost double the weight Captain America could lift.
Holy fucking shit.
That wasn’t his only discovery though. He realized he wasn’t sticky, he could just grip things the same way spiders do.
Strange would find this so cool.
He went back to the tower before sunset, but that didn’t ruin his mood. No, he was amazed.
Of course, nothing could ever stay good for Peter.
Peter stayed up past dark like he usually did. He went to sleep early the previous night, going to sleep as soon as sunset started, which meant he didn't get some of his homework done.
Peter wished he didn’t stay up because when he did, he couldn’t go back to sleep.
He could hear their screams, their screams as they were being robbed, killed, and raped. Their cries as a gunshot went off, and they cradled their loved ones in their arms. The sirens of police ringing, the cries and screams of civilians who just wanted to go home.
He needed to do something.
He knew Tony had a small spare lab on their floor, but it was rarely used. It was stocked with basic materials but, because of the lack of major tools, Tony almost always went down to his bigger lab.
Peter also knew that the cameras only turned on when an unidentified person walked in, and Peter was not an unidentified person.
He snuck in, and for the next five hours, he made a suit. His first instinct was to make it red and blue. Harley’s favorite color was blue, when he first moved in, he carried around a bright blue baby blanket everywhere he went. The inside of his room was bright blue for years, though he wouldn’t know anymore. The iron man suit was also red, but Tony just generally liked the color. Peter remembered once when Tony was drunk, he mentioned how his Aunt Peggy would always wear bright red lipstick with a bright red hat, and that’s why it was his favorite.
As wrong as it felt, Peter still loved them. He loved them with all his heart, and all he ever wanted was their approval, their validation. It felt wrong to crave something this bad, but he couldn’t stop himself. Red like his father, and his father’s Aunt Peggy, blue like his brother, and his little baby blanket.
No, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t hold onto something dead. It was like wishing for the dead leaves of a plant to grow, the only thing you can do is cut them off. After all, they hadn’t even noticed that he was practically dying for ten days.
Soon, the suit was ready.
As he went back to his room and looked out the window, he felt a sort of power. Not like his newfound superpowers, but the type where you feel like the world is yours. He felt like the world was his to conquer, that it was not the cruel and unloving sea that he knew it to be, but the beautiful expanse of opportunity that was his to take. If he had to do it all again, the dismissal, the heartbreak, the rejection, to feel this way, he would.
That week, the week where he was dying. The week where he was sure he had been shackled with hundred-pound weights, drawn down to the depths of the underworld and brought back again, that was not his death. It was his rebirth.
OoOoO
Around a year ago, when he was only 15, when he had first met Stephen, he went to Pepper.
“Mrs. Potts”
“Peter, please, call me Pepper”
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“It depends, what is it?”
“I want to become someone new”
“I’m sorry?”
“Change my identity, I mean”
“Why would I help you with that?”
“Because I cannot be Peter Stark for the rest of my life”
Pepper had noticed, noticed the rejection, dismissal, all of it. Maybe it was because she had gone through the same thing herself. Maybe it was because she was an empathetic person. Maybe both. But something that day convinced her to do it. To help him.
“Who would you like to be?”
OoOoO
Peter dumped out his school bag and put his suit, along with some clothes, toiletries, and his sling ring in his bag.
“Friday?” he asked.
“Yes?” her voice boomed
“Lower volume to 50%”
“Of course”, that was better.
“Alright, if I were to leave the tower, who would you inform?”
“I am not programmed to inform anyone of your whereabouts unless asked, would you like me to?”
“No, Friday, that's fine. Is there a security feed in my room?”
“Not currently, would you like me to activate the security feed?”
“No, are there any trackers on me or my things?”
“No”
“Alright then” Peter mumbled to himself.
Peter pulled out his phone and deleted every trace of Stephen Strange from it. He then made one final phone call.
It was around four in the morning, so he wasn’t surprised when the call went straight to voicemail.
“Hey Ned, I just wanted to let you know that you’re not going to see me for a while. It’s not because of you, and I wish with everything in my heart that it didn't have to do this, but I can’t be Peter Stark anymore, and you were Peter Stark’s best friend. I love you, man. I do. You were there for me when no one else was, and, honestly? I would be six feet under if it weren't for you. I'm so sorry I had to say goodbye like this, again, I love you, Goodbye.”
Peter then took his sim card out and smashed it, before putting the phone to sleep.
With one last look at who he used to be, he portalled to Strange’s place.
“Jesus, kid. At least come at a reasonable time”
“I ran away.”
He told Strange about everything, the suit, his leaving, and his new identity. All he could do is hope that Strange would take him in.
“Come here, kid”
Stephen swallowed him in a hug, and all Peter could do was cry.
They stayed like that for a while, until Peter heard a scream.
“Go,” said Strange “ I’m not going to stop you”
With that, Peter changed into his suit and went out into the night.
At 5:30 am, Spiderman was seen in Brooklyn for the first time. Donning a bright red and blue suit, he knew who he was.
He was no longer Peter Stark, who was dismissed, overlooked, and rejected. He was no longer Peter Stark, who wore red and blue for Tony and Harley. He was no longer Peter Stark, who kept to himself to try and keep himself from getting hurt.
He was Peter Parker, who wore red and blue for his father. He was Peter Parker, who will be seen and heard. He was Spiderman.