Shorts

Bitten part 2

Peter pov

The following morning. . .

Peter awoke with a start, jolting upright. Something was off, terribly off. There was an intruder in his room, he was certain of it. It was as if every hair on his body stood upright, warning him of something.

Before he really knew what he was doing, Peter had slammed his right foot on the floor beside his bed. Hearing the sound of a loud crunch, he bent over the side of his bed and glanced in the floor. A large, ugly, and now dead cockroach rested beneath his bare foot. Its brown shell and squashed guts were now smeared on the ball of his foot. Horrified, he quickly wiped his foot off with a tissue.

And now, nothing felt "off" anymore.

Confused, but satisfied, Peter looked over to his clock. It was 8:12 a.m. on a Saturday, and he had nothing to do today. And, he noticed, he was feeling significantly better.

He grabbed his phone from the bedside table to text Ned to see if he wanted to hang out. After he sent the text, he made to set his phone back down.

But it had remained stuck to the palm of his hand.

"What the. . ." Peter mumbled to himself, shaking his hand until the phone finally dropped onto his bed. He stared at it for a moment, until a wild idea struck him. He then picked up his phone once more, and it again stuck to his palm. This time, however, he didn't shake his phone off. His heart beginning to race, he focused very hard on letting go of the phone and to his horror, it tumbled onto his bed.

The bite, Peter thought, flipping his right hand over. It made my hands. . . sticky? The bite was mostly healed now, and the skin around it remained only slightly pink. A part of him wondered if the bite had affected any other part of his skin.

Peter jumped up and out of bed, making his way over to his mirror and taking in his reflection. His face was undeniably normal, aside from the occasional pimple. He sighed in relief; until he caught sight of his body.

"Holy sh-" Peter started, stopping himself so his aunt and uncle wouldn't hear him.

Where his once noodle-like arms rested were now buff, muscular arms. He was no longer terribly thin and now had a nicely toned set of abs and legs. He wasn't overly muscular, but was most certainly above average.

Everything that used to look like sticks on him now looked like a miniature version of that Captain America guy. He turned this way and that, doing every "cool guy" pose he had tried as a kid, only this time he actually looked like a cool kid.

A smile grew on his face as he stared at himself a moment longer. "Wow," he breathed, his eyes wide in awe.

"Peter, are you feeling well enough to come down for breakfast?" his aunt called through his door, knocking him out of his trance.

"Oh, uh, yeah. I feel a lot better, actually," he said. "I'll be down in a minute." He heard his aunt walk away and he raced to his closet, throwing on the first matching outfit he could find.

Peter's shirt stuck to his hand as he pulled it from the closet. He panicked, having forgotten that this was a new issue for him. He took his time to focus on "letting go" of his shirt and pants, grinning as he began to get the hang of it.

Going back towards his bed, he scooped his glasses up off of the bedside table. But when he placed them on, he knew something was wrong - the glasses made everything blurry. He took his glasses off and on a few times, just to be sure that his mind wasn't playing tricks on him. Sure enough, everything was perfectly clear without them. He could read every poster on his wall, and the smallest text on the binding of all of his books. Shrugging, and not even slightly upset, he set his glasses back on the bedside table.

Peter was beginning to think that perhaps that spider bite had done something to him. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a pretty good something.

Peter decided it was well enough time to head to breakfast, but there was one more thing his body was practically begging him to try. He stood by his closet at the far end of his room once more and without hesitation, threw himself into an effortless, quiet backflip.

Never before in his life had he done a backflip, let alone one as perfect as he had just done. "This is nuts!" he whispered to himself, placing his hands on his head for a moment.

He was now directly in front of his bedroom door. As he put his hand around the handle to turn it, he heard a crack.

He had broken the door handle in half with one hand.

"Crap," he muttered, setting the broken piece of the door handle aside. Very gently, he gripped the remainder of the handle and rotated it to open his door.

Peter hurried into the dining area, practically skipping. His uncle was seated at the table reading a newspaper, and his aunt had just placed a bowl of cereal on the table for Peter.

Aunt May looked up in surprise. "Oh, well aren't you peppy today?" she quipped. "And no glasses?" she asked.

"Nah, I figured since I'm not going to school I didn't need 'em today," he said, sitting down at the table. He scooped up a spoonful of Lucky Charms, shoving it in his mouth.

Peter finished his cereal in almost two minutes flat, taking the bowl over to the sink to rinse it out. He used only two fingers to turn the faucet on, afraid he might break it if he used any more. Aunt May paused in pouring herself some cereal, carefully eyeing her nephew, who was still holding the faucet handles with only two fingers.

"Peter," she began, "why on earth are you holding the faucet like that?"

Peter snapped his head around to look at her and felt his face go scarlet. "Oh, I uh, I wanted to see how hard it is to turn the faucet on with only two fingers," he stuttered, and his aunt nodded once in response.

"Okay, well. . ." Aunt May droned, and Peter turned on his heel to leave. "Could you do your uncle and I a favor and run to the store to grab a few things? I left the list on the fridge," Aunt May asked, and Peter halted in his steps.

"Yeah, sure," he said, grabbing the list off of the fridge. "Just a minute."

Peter quickly brushed his teeth and hurried back to his room. He scooped up his phone and wallet, shoving them both in his pockets. He grabbed his earbuds and plugged them into his phone before setting out.

Peter left the apartment that morning with a wide grin. This was going to become a very interesting day, he was sure of it.

***

Ok idk why but the combination of this song and Peter discovering his powers makes me laugh lol