Chapter Text
Evolution does not happen to individuals in nature. It’s a gradual process that takes many generations. The best an individual can hope for is having some weirdo genetic trait that gives them an advantage over everyone else or they learn to adapt with what they have. Peter Parker liked to think he’s doing the best he can with his genetic differences and his knack for adaptation.
Things change for him a lot. Once he had a house and a set of parents, then it was an apartment with an uncle and an aunt. Then only an aunt and a smaller apartment. And now he’s back to a house. Funny how that works. Things change all the time in nature and those that can adapt gradually evolve as a species.
Peter’s probably not a new species though. He could most likely interbreed with a human and produce fertile offspring. Probably. Not that he wants to try that out. Especially now.
Okay.
Enough of the 2:00am thoughts. Peter rolled over to reposition himself on his hammock of webbing to face the phone that was dangling in the air, also suspended by a web. When he unlocked it, the time read four in the morning and he moaned. Only three hours until he had to be up for school.
Sometime later there was a knock on the front door. Peter groaned and saw he still had an hour and a half before he usually got up, but he knew he should take the business. He jumped out of his silken hammock and crawled down the wall where his staircase was supposed to be.
Peter took a deep breath, undid most of the locks, and opened the door slightly. A medium sized round man stood on Peter’s porch. He immediately knew the type of person the man was. “I don’t fix weapons.”
The man shifted but kept a twitching smile on his face. “I’m not here for that. I need this fixed.” The twitchy man held up a gaming system and a broken remote. “My boy was a little too hard on it after he lost a game,” he laughed.
His spider senses weren’t going off, so it was likely he had no ill intent. Peter looked the man up and down but didn’t let himself relax. “When do you need it finished by?”
“As soon as you can. My boy is very unhappy that he broke it and I figured you’re cheaper than a new one.”
“I usually am. Give me a moment to set up.” When Peter started to live here, he tried to remain as unnoticed as possible so no one would bother him or turn him into social services. Thankfully, the house was seen as too damaged for other homeless people to squat in and there were plenty of other dwellings on the block for people like drug users and dealers to do their business in. There was fire damage all over the kitchen, particularly the floors, and it also destroyed the staircase.
As time went on, Peter started bringing home more and more electronics, mostly old and broken stuff that no one wanted and started fixing them up for fun. It was something to do between school and Spiderman and kept his skills and mind sharp. It started becoming more of a business when one of the local children wanted to see what he did all day. After a small lecture about talking to strangers and entering their homes, Peter showed her some of his schoolwork and things he’s built. Sometime later, the young girl came back with her wary mother who needed her old phone repaired so she could work. And from then on news started to spread that the kid living in the burned-out house can repair any electronics.
It was a decent way to get by and he definitely preferred it over cage fighting. A few people gave him money for his services, others bartered, and some provided him food or a mixture of the three. The only two things he didn’t take in were drugs and most weapons. He’d only take weapons if they were interesting, like alien technology or wild creations. Someone offered him a homemade flamethrower once, and how could you say no to that?
Unfortunately, such skills don’t go unnoticed by bigger fish forever.
“My boss’ offer still stands, you know? You could be out of this dump by tonight.” The place is a dump, but it's home. The front room was his workspace with a couple tables set up that had various machine parts scattered about and a dark green stained coach for his ‘clients’ to sit in while he worked. It allowed a few feet of separation between him and the random people he let in his house.
Peter hummed as he tinkered at his workbench. Every so often people come by to try to recruit him for whatever (most likely illegal) operation they were trying to do. While Peter didn’t particularly remember this man from the others, the answer was always the same. “I know, and I have to decline. Thank you though.” The mechanics inside were just shifted a bit and he had to rearrange some things, but the console would live again. “I have a relationship with Stark Industries.”
The man lit a cigarette. Rude. “Seems like a bad relationship.”
“Sometimes,” Peter said with a small smile, but kept his head down. “Working with S.I opens doors.”
He took a drag from the cigarette. “Being associated with Stark can close a lot of doors too. He tends to screw people over. Do you have a tray?”
At least the man was nice enough to try not to get ashes all over Peter’s (admittedly already kinda gross) carpet. Even though Peter didn’t smoke himself, he had multiple ashtrays ranging from cheap plastic ones to funny ceramic and a couple really pretty ones. He chose his favorite, a ceramic one that said, ‘Ashes and Asses go here!’. A nice old lady gave it to him, along with several meals, after he fixed various parts of her house.
“Here you go.” Peter handed him the tray carefully and kept his eyes steady on the man. It could have easily been a ploy to get him close enough to attack. He hated being alone in the house with a strange man, but his spider senses were still quiet, and he really needed the money.
While Peter was up, he removed one of the boards off the window to let in natural light. He had to cannibalize so many of the old schoolhouse calculators for their little solar panels and connect them to any batteries he could get his hands on. It worked for the little power they gave off and it was better than starting up his generator this early in the morning.
“I need to go grab my tester television; I’ll be back in a moment.” When everyone has almost nothing, they want what little others have and it was a small problem when Peter first got into this business. He still had to go outside for school, be Spiderman, and collect new scraps which would leave his ‘home base’ unattended. It’s why he chose not to fix the busted floor of the kitchen or put up a ladder or something to replace the stairs. He’d heard robbers in the middle of the night wonder how he got to the second floor without being able to climb on walls.
They can’t steal what they can’t reach so every time Peter leaves the house, he needs to bring his stuff to the second story, set a few alarms, and startle traps. It was fine to leave out small scraps, but not something as valuable as a television.
As Peter worked the man talked at him. The twitchy man chatted almost aimlessly, his cheeks becoming rosy with color after he pulled a flask from his tan sweater coat. Every once and awhile he would comment on something that Peter was doing and spoke how he was a tinkerer himself mostly working on weapons. In response, Peter would just hum and nod his head.
“The console works again, but the remote’s motion controls are shot. I can switch it out with another I have here if you don’t want to buy a new one.” The home screen showed a profile picture of a young smiling boy and the system had a large timeslot dedicated to Minecraft.
The man nodded, pulled out his wallet, and put down a clip of bills with a business card on top. “When this free trial you have with Stark ends, give us a call. Maybe we could swap information, teach each other. And my boss is a good guy, a real family man.”
The card had a set of bird--phoenix?--wings and read Bestman Salvage. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you. I hope your son has fun with his games.”
“I’m sure he will.” He extinguished the cigarette and left with the game system
Peter relocked the doors before returning to the table to inspect the clip of money. The family he had was long gone and there was no way he would be getting into this one. It was a lot more money than he’d normally ask for, but hey, he gets to eat three meals today and tomorrow. The job only made him a little late in getting ready for school, so it was worth it.
First step of the day: make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. His workbench may look like a mess, but it has a particular order to it to maximize efficiency. Then he gathered his higher valued items again to move them upstairs.
Next steps: check his webs. When he got here, the house was by no means structurally sound, so Peter had to spend a lot of time weaving the webbing in a way that the house wouldn’t collapse on him. His bedroom had the heaviest webbing with most of the ceiling covered, his beloved drapes, and hammocks all made from his biological webs and his non self-dissolvent synthetic stuff.
“Now breakfast.”
A half dozen cocoons the size of his hand dangled from the ceiling by strings. He pulled one down and ate the silk on top before drinking the contents inside. His powers were amazing and unbelievably useful, but the biggest downside was nutrition. His lifestyle didn’t allow for refrigeration, ovens, or microwaves so all his food had to either be bought or freshly caught.
The ‘nutrition sacks’ as Peter liked to call them, are only ever 1 to 3 days old and are filled with the liquid remains of rats and occasionally pigeons he catches in the other webs he has around the city.
Step three: greet Karen. “Hello Karen, good morning.”
“Good morning Peter, you’re late today. You must leave in 2.6 minutes if you wish to make it to school on time at your preferred pace.”
“Thank you, Karen,” Peter said as he grabbed another nutrition sack.
“You’re welcome. Were you able to fix the item that was brought to you?”
As Peter finished up his morning routine, he went over his interactions with Karen. They continued to talk as he swung to school. Karen was the best thing Peter got with the relationship with S.I, she even beat the new suit because she was with him all the time, not just when crime fighting.
Peter landed three blocks away from school to change out of his suit. “I’ll see you after school, Karen.”
“Have a nice day Peter, I look forward to tonight.”
“Me too,” he whispered. As Peter approached school, he tried to make himself as small as possible. He kept his head down and tried to ignore the rush of smells, lights, and noise that assaulted his senses. No one paid him much mind as he stared at the floor and waited for Ned to show up.
“Hey Peter,” Ned greeted, “ready for our chemistry test today?”
No actually. Peter didn’t even know they had a chemistry test today, but he nodded anyway. They walked to homeroom as Ned went through what he did the night before and then a new fan theory on Star Wars he found on Reddit. Peter listened dutifully as Ned went on. With each death of his family members Peter became quieter in public. Most people knew his story and accepted this fact with thinly veiled pity. The teachers and peers who didn’t were either met with silence of soft responses that were hard to hear.
The day went by at a normal pace with mostly nothing of note happening except that Flash tried to bully him today. Like Peter’s voice, Flash’s torments also went down with each death, but it was a tossup if it was because of pity, genuine empathy, or social pressure. Flash couldn’t openly bully Peter anymore, so he became sparser and more strategic about it.
He must corner Peter in places like the bathroom, an empty hallway, or the locker room. It was the easiest with the last one because Peter was always the last one out and he liked to change in the bathroom stall instead of out in the open.
“What’s wrong Penis? Got something you don’t want anyone seeing?” Flash sneered.
Peter kept quiet and tried to walk past Flash without any conflict. Making himself look smaller and sad didn’t work with Flash, sometimes it made him angrier.
Flash blocked his way and caused Peter to take a step back. “I was talking to you.”
It would be easy to break Flash. He still thought Peter was the same boy that couldn’t run more than a quarter mile and lift more than thirty pounds because of his myriad of health problems. To think, the only thing standing in his way now was his morals. As easy it would be, I never would.
“You think you’re too good to talk to anyone, huh?” Flash persisted. He took steps towards Peter to push him back until he met a wall. “You think you can just look down on me?”
Considering Flash was right in front of him, and Peter was taller it was difficult to not physically look down on him. The next best thing was to not make eye contact.
“God, you make me so angry. People think you’re so smart and brave, but you can’t even look in my eyes.” Flash was close enough that Peter could feel his body heat which felt just as warm as his anger.
Peter’s breath picked up and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. To stop his hands from shaking he attached them to the wall behind him slowly. His spider senses which were always at a low hum at school, started to scream at him, but Peter was frozen.
The locker room door opened and Mr. Fallow, their gym teacher entered. “Peter, I know you get extra time to change, but you still have to come to class.” He paused when he saw Peter and Flash, who took a step back. “Is everything okay here, boys?”
“Yeah, Mr. Fallow, I just got in a bit late and was just talking to Peter,” Flash said as he started to walk out of the room.
When Flash left, Mr. Fallow turned to Peter, but didn’t walk closer. “Are you okay Peter?”
Peter nodded.
“He didn’t, uh, do anything to make you uncomfortable right?” Mr. Fallow shifted and looked down at his clipboard.
This time Peter shook his head.
“You can tell me if he did or, or a school counselor if that makes you feel more comfortable. Or a teacher that isn’t me, that would be okay too. You can talk to anyone you need even if it isn’t about Eugene or school related.”
“I’m fine,” Peter said firmly.
“Okay.” Mr. Fallow fidgeted in his spot for a moment before turning away. “Take as much time as you need.” And he left.
Peter sighed and spent a few minutes alone in the locker room. It wasn’t the best place to be. It smelt like B.O, the fluorescent light bulbs gave off a hum, and they made everything have a slight off white tinge to it. Eventually, he was able to unstick himself from the wall. From outside, he could hear people talking, basketballs being dribbled, and Flash was probably waiting for him.
He wished he were at home.