Peter Parker splashed cold water on his face and grabbed the edge of the sink.
The marble groaned.
He let go fast. Looked at his hands. Looked at the sink. No cracks. Okay. Fine.
The face in the mirror was wrong. Not ugly wrong. Just. Not his. The jawline was sharper. His neck was thicker. Under his t-shirt there were shapes that hadn't been there two days ago, muscle wrapped tight around his frame like someone had re-upholstered him in his sleep.
He poked his own bicep. It didn't give.
"Okay so that's. That's a thing."
He turned off the faucet. Two fingers. Barely touching it. The faucet survived.
I need to tell someone. I can't not tell someone. I'm going to explode if I don't tell someone. I can't tell Aunt May. I definitely can't tell Uncle Ben. I can tell Leon. I can sort of tell Leon. I can hint. Hinting is fine. Hinting isn't technically telling.
He pulled on a shirt, crossed the hall, and shoved Leon's door open.
"Leon. Leon Leon Leon."
He leaned against the doorframe. Tried to do the casual lean. The cool lean. The lean that says I have news and I'm very relaxed about it. His left hand gripped the doorframe behind him because if he let it hang free everyone would see it shaking.
"So. Hypothetically. If I told you. That your older brother. Had recently become." He paused. Searched for the word. "Formidable."
-----
I looked up from the Omnitrix.
Peter was standing in my doorway doing the worst impression of a relaxed person I'd ever seen. Leaning at an angle that was going to give him a back problem, grinning so wide it looked like his face hurt, and his left hand was white-knuckled on the doorframe hard enough to dent the wood.
"Formidable," I repeated.
"Yeah. Like. Physically formidable. Like if someone. If someone were to, I don't know, hypothetically mess with you? Or with this family? I could. Handle it. I could handle that situation now. That's all I'm saying."
"You could handle it."
"Yeah."
"You. Peter Parker. Who threw up on the Cyclone at Coney Island last summer."
"That was a stomach thing, that had nothing to do with. That's not relevant."
"Who got winded walking up four flights of stairs last month."
"The elevator was broken and I had a heavy backpack, Leon, that's not."
"Who cried during Marley & Me."
"Everyone cries during Marley & Me! That movie is emotional terrorism and you know it!"
I stared at him. He stared at me. His grin was starting to crack at the edges.
"Pete."
"Yeah."
"Go eat breakfast."
His shoulders sagged. "You don't believe me."
"I believe you think something is different. I also believe you haven't eaten yet and your hands are shaking."
He looked at his right hand. It was, in fact, trembling. He shoved it in his pocket.
"Fine. But I'm serious. Something happened and I'm. I'm figuring it out. And when I figure it out I'm gonna come back and you're gonna feel really stupid for not taking me seriously right now."
"I'll prepare my apology in advance."
"You should!"
He pointed at me, held the point for too long, couldn't figure out how to end the conversation, and left. The door bounced off the frame because he pulled it too hard.
I heard him stomping down the stairs. Then I heard the fridge open before he even made it to the kitchen.
-----
Dinner was a crime scene.
Peter had his face about three inches from his plate. Meatloaf. Mashed potatoes. Salad. All of it disappearing at a rate that defied biology. He wasn't chewing. He was compressing food into smaller food and swallowing it. His fork moved in a continuous loop from plate to mouth, plate to mouth, like a machine that someone forgot to turn off.
Dad watched this from across the table. Fork in hand. Mouth slightly open. The newspaper forgotten on his lap.
"Is he okay?" Dad said it to no one in particular.
"I'm fine." Peter didn't look up. The words came out muffled through a wad of mashed potatoes. "I'm just hungry."
"Honey, you're on your third plate." Mom was holding her water glass with both hands, the way she held things when she was trying not to intervene. "Should I be concerned? Do you have a tapeworm?"
"I don't have a. Why does everyone keep." Peter swallowed. Grabbed bread. "I'm just hungry. Is that a crime? Am I not allowed to be hungry in this house?"
"You ate an entire meatloaf, Peter."
"It was a small meatloaf."
"It was not a small meatloaf. I made it."
Dad looked at me. The look said help.
"Growth spurt," I said. I didn't look up from my plate. "His body's burning through calories. Look at his neck. It's bigger than last week."
Dad leaned across the table and squinted at Peter's neck. Peter froze mid-chew, a piece of bread hanging out of his mouth.
"Huh." Dad sat back. "I guess I gotta up the grocery budget."
"Can I keep eating?"
"Eat, Pete."
Peter went back to destroying the meatloaf. He caught my eye across the table and gave me a small nod. The kind of nod that said thank you for not making this weirder than it already is.
I nodded back and cut my egg.
-----
Midtown High. Afternoon.
The gymnasium smelled like rubber and sweat and whatever body spray sixteen year old boys thought made them attractive. The wrestling mats were laid out in the center, and the bleachers were half full because watching Flash Thompson wrestle someone was basically the school's version of pay-per-view.
"Parker!"
Flash was in the center of the mat. Singlet on, arms out, bouncing on his toes. The crowd noise was building around him and he was feeding on it, the way he always did, turning the attention into energy, getting bigger, getting louder.
"Get out here, Parker!"
Peter was at the edge of the crowd.
He should've been terrified. Last month, this moment would've had him calculating exit routes and pretending he had a bathroom emergency. But last month was a different person. Last month was before the spider. Before the sink. Before he woke up and realized he could hear his neighbor flush the toilet from two rooms away.
Right now, standing at the edge of the mat, Peter felt something he'd never felt in a gym in his entire life.
Nothing.
Not fear. Not nervousness. Nothing. Flash was bouncing around out there like he was dangerous, and Peter's body was telling him that Flash Thompson was about as threatening as a golden retriever.
He could see everything. Flash's weight on his front foot. The way his left shoulder dropped before he moved. The gap in his guard on the right side that was so obvious it was almost insulting.
He's slow. He's really, really slow.
"Come on, Microparker!" Flash lunged forward, arms wide, grin locked in place. "I'm gonna fold you in half!"
Peter didn't step back.
His body moved before his brain signed off on it. His right hand came back. Fist tight. Aimed straight at Flash's jaw. Fast. So fast his own eyes couldn't track it.
Then the hairs on the back of his neck went straight up.
Not a warning about Flash.
A warning about what he was about to do to Flash.
You're going to kill him.
The thought hit like a bucket of cold water. Peter's fist opened. His arm was already committed, already moving, so he turned the punch into a shove. Open palm. Flat against Flash's chest. The lightest push he could manage. Just moving him away. Just creating distance.
It felt like pushing a pillow.
*BOOM.*
Flash left the ground.
Not tripped. Not stumbled. Launched. His feet came off the mat, his body went horizontal, and he flew backward across the gym in a straight line. Arms trailing. Eyes going blank. He hit the equipment rack back-first and the metal buckled inward with a crash. Basketballs and volleyballs spilled off the shelves and bounced across the floor in every direction.
Flash slid down the rack. Hit the ground. Didn't move. His eyes were rolled back.
The gym went dead.
Thirty people. Every single mouth open. Every phone up. Nobody breathing.
Peter looked at his hand.
I pushed him. I barely touched him. I barely. Oh God. Oh God is he dead. Did I kill him. Did I just kill Flash Thompson in front of thirty people.
"Oh my God." Gwen Stacy. Three rows up on the bleachers. Hand over her mouth. But her eyes weren't scared. They were locked on Peter, sharp, focused, like she was running calculations behind them.
"Parker!" The gym teacher was crossing the mat, whistle in his mouth, face red. "What did you DO?"
"I didn't. He was. I just." Peter was backing up, hands out in front of him, palms up. "I pushed him. I swear I just pushed him. I didn't even push him hard, he just. He went."
He was talking too fast. Saying too much. His brain was dumping words out of his mouth without checking them first, the way it always did when he panicked.
-----
I came through the gym doors with a water bottle.
I'd heard the boom from the hallway. Didn't need the Omnitrix to tell me what had happened. One look at the scene and I had the picture. Flash unconscious against a dented rack. Peter in the center of the mat looking like he was about to pass out. Teacher heading toward him with murder in his eyes. Thirty kids with their phones recording.
I walked past the crowd. Past Peter. Straight to the teacher.
"Hey. Coach Davis."
He stopped.
"Thompson was sprinting on the mat." I kept my voice even. Not defensive. Not hurried. Like I was reporting something boring. "Mat's been damp all week. Everyone knows that. His feet went out, he went backward, hit the rack. I saw it from the door."
Coach Davis looked at me. Looked at the mat. Looked at Flash. Looked at Peter.
"Parker pushed him." Davis said it, but his voice was already uncertain.
"Peter was standing still. Thompson charged. Thompson slipped." I pointed at the scuff marks on the mat. "Look at the marks. That's his shoes sliding. Momentum carried him into the rack."
Davis chewed on his whistle. His eyes went back to the mat. The scuff marks. The dented rack. The gap between where Peter was standing and where Flash had landed.
None of it made sense. But the alternative was believing that Peter Parker had slapped the school's starting quarterback ten feet through the air with one hand.
People believe what's easier.
"Alright. You two." He pointed at the nearest kids. "Get Thompson to the nurse." He blew his whistle. "Everyone else. Back to stations. Show's over."
I walked over to Peter. He was still standing in the middle of the mat, arms at his sides, staring at his right hand.
I put the water bottle in that hand. He gripped it. Way too hard. The plastic crinkled.
"Ease up."
He loosened his grip. Looked at me.
"Did I kill him?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"He's breathing, Pete."
"Because it felt like. I barely touched him. I swear I barely. Leon, I didn't mean to."
"I know. Drink the water."
He drank. His throat bobbed three times. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Thank you." Quiet. Almost a whisper. "For the. For whatever you said to Coach Davis."
"Thompson slipped. That's all that happened."
Peter looked at me for a long moment. Something in his face was trying to form a question. A big question. The kind of question that started with Leon, do you know what's happening to me and ended somewhere neither of us was ready to go.
He didn't ask it. I didn't make him.
"Go get your stuff," I said. "Bell's in five minutes."
-----
After school, Peter said he wanted to walk home alone.
I let him go. Took a different route. Kept him in sight from a block away because old habits die hard and new habits hadn't formed yet.
Peter walked slow. Head down. Hands in his jacket pockets. Processing. I could practically see his brain chewing through what happened in that gym, trying to organize it, trying to make it make sense.
Then his head came up.
He stopped in front of a shop window. Some used motorcycle place, a beat up Honda in the window with a price tag dangling from the handlebars.
He stood there looking at it for a while. His reflection in the glass stood a little taller than it used to.
Something blew against his leg. A piece of paper, caught by the wind. He peeled it off his calf, glanced at it, and almost balled it up.
Then he read it.
His posture changed. His chin came up. His shoulders squared.
He folded the paper carefully and put it in his backpack. Then he turned and walked toward the subway entrance. Not slow anymore. Fast. Purposeful. The walk of someone who'd just made a decision.
I crossed the street after he disappeared underground and found the same flyer taped to a lamppost.
*UNDERGROUND FIGHTING TOURNAMENT*
*SEEKING TRUE WARRIORS*
*Survive 3 Minutes. Win $3,000 Cash.*
I pulled the flyer off the post. Looked at it. Looked at the subway entrance.
Yeah. Of course.
Peter Parker, fresh off accidentally launching a guy across a gymnasium, was about to climb into a cage with strangers and hit them for money.
I crumpled the flyer and tossed it in the trash.
I couldn't stop him. This was the part of the story that had to happen. The cocky phase. The part where having power felt good and consequences felt like something that happened to other people. He'd learn. He'd learn the way everyone learned. The hard way.
But I'd be around. Close enough to step in if the thing he was fighting hit harder than he expected.