Phantomania | Peter Parker x Reader

Chapter 1

"Peter, if you don't give me back my phone, I will throw you out the window!"

Peter just laughed at me as he held my phone out of reach. He'd grown taller over the past few years. He now reached a towering height of six feet. That was why I couldn't reach the phone he held up above his head.

"You're supposed to be studying, not scrolling through Instagram!" he laughed.

I huffed.

"Yeah, well, Spiderman is really cool, okay? And it's not like you don't watch videos of him, too," I said.

Peter chuckled and handed my phone back. I checked the time and groaned.

"I have to go now," I sighed. "Lizzie and Paul wanted me back by seven."

Peter bit his lip.

"Do you want to ask if you can stay over?" he suggested.

"I stayed over the night before last," I said. "I don't want to trouble you or May."

"It isn't a trouble," Peter mumbled.

I gave my best friend a tight hug.

"Don't worry. You'll see me tomorrow," I said.

Peter sighed and hugged me back. We pulled apart and I packed all of my books into my bag. I walked out of Peter's room and to the front door.

"Bye, May!" I called.

"Bye, Y/n!" I heard from somewhere in the apartment.

"Bye, Pete," I said, hugging him again.

"See you tomorrow, N/n," Peter said.

We pulled apart again and I left Peter's apartment. I texted my foster parents, letting them know I was going back home. Not that they really cared all that much.

Lizzie and Paul were wonderful people, really. They just didn't know how to take care of a kid. They thought that it would be better for a kid to have a home than be in the foster system until they were eighteen.

I supposed it was nice to have my own room and my own stuff. But a bit of parental love would have been nice, too.

They were never around. They always had work to do, and places to be. I knew how to cook dinner for myself, and that's what I would usually do. Tonight, however, was one of the rare nights they were both home before eleven at night.

I walked down the streets. It was still pretty light out, but I was still wary. Even with Spiderman protecting Queens, there was still a lot of crime going around.

As if my thoughts summoned him, I saw Spiderman swing over my head and around the corner. I wondered how he did it. How he saved the city, even though he risked his life in the process.

I wanted to be like him. I had abilities, ranging from telekinesis to flight to invisibility. I even had a suit.

The suit was the only thing I had from my parents. Everything else was destroyed in the explosion that gave me my powers. I had unintentionally teleported to a Shield base during the incident. They had thought it was the suit that had teleported me to the base. They had studied it but soon realised that it had done nothing to help me. They now believed it was the Tesseract that had teleported me to the base. I felt no inclination to tell them that it was actually me.

I had been sent into the foster system shortly after. Lizzie and Paul found me in the system about a year later and took me in.

I continued walking home, thinking about superheroes. Could I become one? I really wanted to, but I was scared. What if I died? What if I tried to save someone but killed them instead?

Did Spiderman think these things?

I continued thinking about it all the way home. When I reached my apartment, I unlocked the door and went in.

"Hey, Y/n!" Paul called from the kitchen. "We're making spaghetti!"

"I'm just going to put my bag in my room!" I called back.

I rushed to my room and put my bag on the floor. In the rush, I knocked over my picture frame on my bedside table. I swore as I picked it up, praying that it didn't break. Luckily for me, it was in perfect condition. I smiled as I looked at the picture. It was a photo of me and my three friends, Peter, MJ, and Ned. Peter had his arm around my shoulders, and I had mine around his waist. MJ was leaning against my shoulder and Ned had his arm around Peter's neck. It was taken on my sixteenth birthday.

I sighed and put the picture frame back down. I walked out of my room and bumped into Lizzie.

"Oh, Y/n. I was just about to tell you that dinner is on the table," she said.

"Thanks, Lizzie," I said.

We walked to the dinner table and sat down. We ate in silence.

"So... how was work?" I asked.

"Good," they both said.

I refrained from rolling my eyes. There were never any details about their work. They never asked how my day was, either.

Once dinner was finished, I went back to my room. I played some music and texted Peter.

Peter. He was the sweetest person I knew. He was kind, funny, and super smart. I'd had a crush on him since freshman year. It was the year we'd met. I didn't have very many friends, and neither did he. We were paired up in science and we instantly hit it off. A few months later, we brought Ned into our group, and then a year after that, MJ had joined our little gang.

Peter knew about the foster family situation. So did May. I had asked them not to say anything, though. If they did, I would probably be put back into the foster system, and might never see them again.

No one knew about my powers. Not Lizzie, not Paul, not even Peter.

I wanted to tell Peter every day about my powers. It killed me to be keeping a secret like that from him. It's not that I didn't trust him – I trusted him with my life. I just thought that the less people knew, the better. I didn't want to put anyone in danger.

I looked at the time. Ten thirty. I decided to go to bed so that I would get enough sleep for the test tomorrow.