Chapter Text
Growing up, Peter is assumed incompetent. He misses his milestones. His body doesn’t listen to him. When he is a toddler, he starts to form words but then it stops. It regresses. He can’t speak.
The child psychologist gives him an IQ test with questions he understands but no way to communicate the answers. “What color is the block, Peter?”
He rocks and hits his fists in frustration because he does not have a voice. Peter lunges forward, trying to aim for the red on her shirt. Red! Can’t you see it’s red? She chastises him, softly, in a baby voice, and asks again, “What color is the block?”
Peter does not have words. Not words that come out of his mouth and throat. All Peter has is his body which does not move how he wants it to. Peter has frustration, Peter is not listened to, Peter grows up being taught the alphabet when he already knows how to read.
The ABA therapists are worse. When Peter refuses to look them in the eye, they give him a bad smell. When he flaps his hands, they hold them down. “Quiet hands, Peter.” Their smiles are kind but their actions are rotten. Peter cries more, trapped in his body and his mind, as the world spins and Aunt May reads to him at night. It is his only reprieve.
“He can’t understand you, May,” Ben says, standing in the doorway.
Peter whines in joy at the sight. His Uncle Ben is nice to him and he likes the feeling of being on the back of his motorcycle. Peter wishes he would read to him, too. He likes the sound of Ben’s voice - even if sometimes Ben tries to hold him or make his hands quiet.
“He likes it,” May says. With her eyes looking away, Peter takes in her face - warm, kind, smiling but not rotten. “See how happy he gets when I read, Ben. I just turn off the lights and read, look how happy he is.”
“How can you tell?” Ben asks. “He’s not crying but-”
Peter tunes them out. He doesn’t like them talking about him like he’s not in the room. His happy rocks turn violent and his hand thwacks against his head, distracting his body from the brimming anxiety and tension. Life is constant stress and stimulus. Peter does what he has to in order to calm down.
“Peter, Peter, look at me, buddy.” No. He doesn’t want to. “Peter.” Ben grips his face and Peter flails his arm out, hitting him across the face. He’s not as little as he was when he was a kid. Ben bleeds. “Shit.”
“Ben, are you okay?” May has stopped her reading and puts her palm against Ben’s face. He doesn’t recoil. His skin doesn’t crawl from the soft pressure. Ben sighs like May’s hand is a deep pressure blanket.
“My fault, I should’ve learnt not to touch him by now.” The only way Peter can communicate is through his body. He says no when he resists, when he screams, when he struggles. But sometimes his body is beyond control and it says things that he does not agree with. “Goodnight, little buddy.”
Peter hates how they talk to him like he’s still a little kid.
One day, Peter sees how May writes on the calendar. She picks up a blue biro and writes his ABA appointments and adds a new one to the calendar. Peter reads it, then - speech therapist. He wants to cross those words off the calendar. Peter can’t speak. Why are they so hellbent on making him speak?
So he steals May’s pens. Whenever he sees them, he goes for them, whether they’re in her hand or not. He gets distracted, sure. The world is a detailed and intricate place. He is entranced by the lines and grooves in their dining room table. He hears a bird outside of his window and listens to her song. May forgets to turn off the lights and has the evening news on too loud so his brain lights up and explodes, leaving Peter to pick up the pieces of his sobbing rocking body. He feels embarrassed and annoyed because when he cries, people do not see a man in distress but a child having a tantrum.
After a few days, May starts to notice her missing pens. “Ben, honey, do you know where my blue pens are?”
Ben looks up from his newspaper. “I saw Pete holding one the other day.”
“Is this true, Peter?” May asks, even though the question is redundant. Peter rocks and makes a noise. It does not come out as a word. His brain refuses. “Would you show me where you put them, Peter?”
Peter gets to his feet and shuffles to his room, decorated in Iron Man memorabilia and his array of rocks are in their display case. He gets one every birthday and for Christmas, as well. Peter knocks on the glass of the display case. May kneels down and sees the blue pens on the floor. He’d tried to get them in the case but couldn’t get the glass to move.
“It’s locked, honey. Why did you want the pens in here?” May gathers up Peter’s hard-won hoard. She doesn’t know that Peter wants to write with them. He just can’t get his motor skills to let him. Curiously, May hands him one of the pens.
Peter holds it and presses it to the case. It doesn’t write.
“You need to click the pen, honey.” May clicks it for him, her hands nimble. Peter scrapes the pen along the case. He wants to write. “Peter, we’ll have to repaint it.” She clicks her tongue.
It’s his shelf. Why does she care about painting it?
“Here, try this paper.” May puts down an A4 sheet of paper and Peter puts the pen up to it but cannot make the letter shapes form like the books May reads to him do, her finger running against the letters. Her laugh is honey-sweet-golden-soft and patronizing. “Not quite, honey.”
Peter is 18 years old when he is placed in Oscorp’s vocational work program where he is paid less than minimum wage and segregated from his allistic peers. His brain rots in his skull and he fumes with the injustice of the experience. He pitches fits every shift until eventually he is removed from the program - but not before he is bitten by a radioactive spider.
Peter gets sick. His family does not know what is wrong with him and assume his stress is due to autism rather than a medical condition. Peter cannot communicate that he feels feverish, that his bones hurt, that he can hear and see and feel and taste and smell even more than before. The stimulus is unbearable and Peter hits his ear over and over until it bleeds, just to make the sound stop. The sound stops, his head hurts badly, and Peter is taken to the ER where he is fussed over by condescending nurses and a doctor who sees him as less than human and recommends “no intervention” due to his “lack of quality of life”. Aunt May storms out and Uncle Ben talks to her softly about how Peter’s life is not a life at all.
Miraculously, he heals. He does not die from the edema in his skull. The doctors call it a miraculous recovery. Aunt May sobs with joy and Uncle Ben smiles at him but Peter cannot forget how willing Ben was to let him die, all because he didn’t believe Peter’s existence was worth it. Peter no longer makes happy sounds when he sees Uncle Ben. He whines and hits and struggles whenever he enters the room until one day Ben learns what Peter’s no means. One day Ben leaves him alone and Peter is left with the soothing words of Aunt May’s stories.
His hypersenses make his body even harder to contain. Peter is in a constant state of stimming in order to function. His sunglasses, noise-canceling headphones, and loose clothing aren’t enough to soothe him. He weeps as the world attacks him with the noises of traffic, the microwave beeping, the bird outside his window (now harsh and shrill where it was once beautiful and melodic), and the tastes of his favorite foods. Peter is no longer able to eat chicken nuggets.
Peter is in crisis.
Uncle Ben notices how much he is struggling and takes Peter out into nature. They go for a rural hike with Ben carrying everything including Peter’s special pillow that he can’t sleep without and the tent. At first, Peter thinks he will hate it. He doesn’t like the heat - sticky and constant - and he doesn’t like the sound of mud squelching, the feeling of spiderwebs in his face, or how bushes and branches brush against him. But Uncle Ben has seemingly thought of this. He takes Peter through a dappled apple orchard and through miles of farmland. It is open, secluded, and dry enough that the leaves crackle pleasingly as he walks. As they travel further and further from the bustle of traffic and the smoky scent of houses, Peter’s shoulders relax.
Uncle Ben talks. A lot. Like a man who thinks his companion can’t understand him. He talks about falling in love with May, about how much he loves Peter and wishes he could help him, and he apologizes for what he said at the hospital. Peter doesn't know if he should let it go. It's not like he has a lot of options. Ben is shameless in the way people get when they are alone. He doesn’t think Peter will remember any of this or could understand it to begin with.
The hike likely would’ve been harder before his spider-bite but Peter has found that although his sensory difficulties are exponentially worse, his motor skills and physical strength have improved and sharpened. He is not as accurate as most people and if he picked up a pen, he still would not be able to write, but he may be able to type if the keys are big enough.
It is as he listens to the wind rustling through the trees, howling across the plains through the gatherings of corn and wheat, that Peter comes up with his idea. In his mind lay schematics for a suit that holds him tightly and securely, with his favorite colors red and blue, for a hero that the world didn’t know it needed. Peter thinks of Iron Man and how his greatest wish would be to meet him, not as a charity case but on a level playing field. He thinks of how the world consistently underestimates him, viewing him as incompetent and empty in his mind simply because he cannot form words with his mouth.
So Peter plots to leave the house to find something to speak with. He can’t get the door open by turning the knob but he manages to brute force it. The hinges squeal as they snap. “Peter! Peter, what are you doing, honey?” Aunt May flies into the room at the loud noise. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
Peter starts to walk through the hole that the door has left but May stops him, gripping his arm. “Peter, stop. Where are you going?” He takes another step, shaking off her grip, and making a soothing humming sound in his throat. I’m an adult! He thinks. I need to make my own choices!
Uncle Ben hears the commotion and stares at the gaping doorway with a pale face, like he sometimes gets when he comes home from patrol late. Ben is a police officer and Peter is told that means he’s a good man. “What happened to the door, May?”
“He- I’m not sure.” Aunt May wrings her hands. “I think Peter did it.”
Uncle Ben’s brow creases. “How could he do that? That door is reinforced, May.”
“Maybe, maybe he’s a mutant?” She trails off, weakly. Uncle Ben groans like it’s the last thing either of them needs. “Remember that ER visit and how he, how he almost.” How I almost died. Peter finishes her sentence. “Then he didn’t. He was fine. Healthier, even. He hasn’t been sick since, which is strange because Peter usually gets all the season’s colds.”
Ben frowns. “This isn’t good, May. Peter already doesn’t know his own strength. He could really hurt someone.” Peter lingers in the doorway, hitting his hand against the wall to try to calm his racing heart. There is an undertone here that means nothing good. His internal senses are screaming at him, danger! Danger! “If he does that, you know what they’d do with him. He may be intellectually disabled-” I’m not! Why can’t you hear me? “-but they’ll still put him on the Raft.”
Aunt May gasps like it’s the worst thought imaginable. Peter knows about the Raft. He saw it on the news when the Avengers had their falling out. It’s where they lock up bad guys, criminals, mutants with an evil agenda. I’m not evil. It’s not right. “He can’t survive that, Ben. He needs special care.”
“I know.” Ben looks grim. “I think I have a solution, May. Some guys I know - on the force - have access to special bracelets that suppress mutant abilities. I can get a pair for him. He’ll go back to how he was and no one will ever need to know.”
You’re going to take away my strength? Peter starts hitting his hand harder, head lolling as the thought frightens him. You’ll take away the only thing that gives me a chance to be a hero? The wall cracks.
“Peter! Stop it!” May rushes forward, careful not to touch him. “Peter, deep breaths, darling. In for three, hold it, out for three. There you go. Oh, Ben, he’s bleeding.”
“You okay there, buddy?” Ben says with a nervous smile. Peter rocks instead of hitting and watches as his broken hand heals in a matter of minutes.
“That’s- that’s not normal, is it, Ben?” Aunt May, who is careful to call him disabled and not useless, who calls him autistic and not stupid, says that’s not normal. Peter’s gut shrivels up with shame and he feels sick and hateful all of a sudden. He’d trusted her not to hate him.
“It’s all going to be okay,” Ben says, reassuringly, in a tone that Peter hates, a tone that people use when their solution is going to hurt him - a lot. “I’ll fix this, May. Just, just keep him here and I’ll get the bracelets ASAP.”
I’m on the clock, thinks Peter, plotting a breakout. He’s never really wanted to leave home. He knows that the outside world is cruel and that people need money to survive, money that he can’t earn because he can’t speak and his body doesn’t behave. But this is more important. Peter has the opportunity to be a hero and he can’t let that go.
Peter watches the non-ticking digital clock by his bed for two hours before he deems it safe enough to leave. May is quietly snoring in the other room while Ben is out, meeting up with work contacts who have access to ability-suppressing bracelets, having called a contractor to come fix the broken front door in the morning. Peter packs his velcro backpack, filling it with his pillow and his raincoat, and then drags it onto his shoulders. It takes a few tries but comes easier than it used to before the bite.
He manages to leave the house and the building. The other occupants of their apartment complex know of Peter and have met him, and cooed in their baby-voices about how brave he is and how brave Aunt May is for looking after him. Their knowledge is a danger but Peter’s spidey-senses allow him to avoid them as he takes the elevator to the ground floor and makes it out onto the street. It is not the first time he has left the house alone but it is the first time that he has not intended to return.
With his sunglasses on and his headphones off, Peter hopes to avoid the notice of people as they walk by. He has the strange ability to stick to buildings but wants to wait until he has a suit with which to hide his identity to use it. He wishes that Aunt May had read him more non-fiction growing up so that he might begin to hypothesize what his powers precisely were. He knows they originate from the glowing spider that bit him but can’t be certain what properties that spider had and what properties he would inherit from it. The most he knows about spiders is what he observes of the ones who build their webs around the house.
“Spare a dollar?” A homeless beggar on the corner of a street a few blocks away from his home says. His voice gets louder as Peter walks past, “A dollar, please sir?”
Peter wishes he had money to spare but he doesn’t. “Not going to spare a dollar, Bambi? You may be cute but your heart is as black as coal!” Peter stops as he hears a voice that he has only heard when shown in tandem with wanted ads and warning PSAs. Deadpool, the notorious mercenary with a mouth.
Peter turns to him, slowly, looking over his shoulder to avoid his face. He is infinitely curious about meeting his second hero - first villain? - and lets out an excited sound. Deadpool’s white lenses widen and Peter thinks oops, so much for going unnoticed.
“Are you okay, man?” Deadpool cocks his head. “I think that was a happy sound but I don’t want to assume. That makes me an ass and your ass look- wait, how old are you?”
Peter continues standing, sighing internally as yet another person in his life will no doubt assume he’s got nothing going on in his brain.
Deadpool squeaks, “Shit, my bad, dude. Do you have your AAC? Taking that silence as a no?? Sorry if you do. I think I’ve got a pretty basic letterboard in my pocket, wait a sec-” Deadpool rummages around his apparently deep pockets, pulling out old paper gum wrappers that crinkle nicely and loose change that clangs not-so-nicely together, before finding a creased sheet of paper with the alphabet on it. “Here. If you can use it.” He holds it out for Peter who has never been able to use one before, due to his motor difficulties. After enough tries, his speech therapist simply gave up and Aunt May sighed in relief that the weekly cost from their already skimpy budget was removed.
Staring at the cracks in the brick wall that snake up to the top and ignoring the beggar who continues to beg and the streetlamps which flicker unpleasantly, Peter drags his fingers over the letters, hovering over each one long enough for Deadpool to sound it out.
A p r a x i a
A u t i s m
“Apraxia! Ah, I know that one! Sorry for assuming you were a cheapskate, man - or a man. Actually, what do you identify as? I’m genderpunk as fuck, to be honest, though most people would say I’m a man. Basic Barbie bitch is my main term!”
H u m a n
N i c e t o m e e t y o u
It takes an embarrassingly long time to spell that sentence even with his spider powers, but Peter counts it as a victory nonetheless. Not bad for someone who has been kept in segregated classrooms at a third grade level for most of his life. Peter just has to be grateful that May read to him, otherwise he thinks he would feel a lot more lost and betrayed than he already does.
“Nice to meet you too! Omg, are you a fan? Human is such a good gender and sorry for calling you cheap, I saw your sunnies and assumed the worst. People who wear sunglasses are either cool as fuck or Tony Stark wannabes so-” Peter grows defensive at the slandering of his idol and starts to walk away. “Okay, nice to meet you, human!” Peter takes the crinkled letterboard with him and puts it in his backpack when he’s able to stop.
It’s the first step to independence, he thinks.