Better Google It
Okay, so maybe buying a small outfit wasn’t the end of the world. They’ve had it for a couple of months, and the only dangerous crisis was caused by the Avengers, Peter hasn’t even gotten shot or stabbed more than a handful of times. Alright, maybe they still aren’t comfortable with the thought of someone seeing them in said outfit, but that’s okay, the little moments where they find the time to double check all of their locks and blinds is enough for them. Those precious few minutes, or hours that one time, had been enough to fill their heart with a sense of rightness they haven’t felt since the first took up Spider-Manning, which seems like forever ago. Funnily enough, that first leap of faith off that skyscraper felt similarly to those rare moments.
Luckily for Peter, they don’t always feel the need to be that person, some days Peter feels like enough, stiff jeans and science pun t-shirts feel like home in a way that they always have. Maybe that’s the most confusing part of this, trying to translate their own feelings into a gender that doesn’t make their skin feel so tight. Maybe it’d be easier to just pick one, even just plain nonbinary probably wouldn’t make their head spin like it does when they wake up, would mean they didn’t have to sort through their emotions to see who they would be that day.
On the other hand, a few days of wrongness is easier to hide than a lifetime of it. Sure, it’d be nice to have a schedule for this kinda thing, but then it wouldn’t feel quite so real. They can pretend it doesn’t exist all they want on their masculine days, act like it was an overreaction or an off day, but on the days when they wake up and immediately know that a single “he” directed at them will hurt more than a building crushing their lungs, it becomes a lot harder to ignore.
They had once woke up feeling normal, but by lunchtime their chest began to tighten, each breath a fight and each thought a negative. The person in the mirror suddenly wasn’t them anymore, because they could never be “him”. The second they got home they broke down, cursing and crying and wondering why they had to be so different, so wrong, so confusing. And once the tears ran out, they got in their comfiest, subsequently rattiest, pair of baggy shorts and a hoodie that had once been Ned’s, and started to research what they were feeling. Emotions were hard to comprehend on the best of days, but research was something they had learned to do even while on the verge of a post exam week coma, and there had to be someone out there that was going through what they were going through.
Clicks filled the air as they tried to turn their feelings into orderly words in their search bar, followed by silence as they debated hitting enter. Either they were validated, or they were broken, and although they logically knew that their opinion of themselves shouldn’t be changed by a simple Google search, that didn’t make the anticipation any less heavy, nor did it relieve their anxiety. Being a vigilante in New York probably shouldn’t stress them out less than their own thoughts and identity, but there they were, fighting a second break down just to figure themselves out.
They close their eyes, take a deep breath and smash their keyboard, letting fate (and finger placement) decide their path. Fortunately, they hadn’t moved their hand away from the enter key in the first place, so their query, and a few interesting letters and symbols, goes through, and they open their eyes to pages upon pages of people explaining the exact same thing they've been feeling, although with a bit less angst and unease. According to Google, and about 5,380,000 results written by people just like them, they were perfectly normal. Sure, maybe people like them weren’t common, but they were common enough to have a name and a flag. Maybe, if they ever get far enough into this whole “self love and expression” thing, they could come out as Spidey with a pun about being genderfluid and swinging on a homemade web fluid. Tony would probably appreciate it, if he didn’t start ignoring their very existence after coming out. Food for thought they supposed.