Metamorphosis - An Irondad Fanfic

Chapter 4 - The Becoming

Peter couldn't stop hearing. 

He tossed and turned for the past three nights, listening to the city breathing down his neck. He tried everything: earplugs, headphones, melatonin, and even manifestation videos. Nothing quieted the world around him—or, rather, nothing could lessen his ability to hear the world around him. 

It was even worse at school; Peter heard things about classmates that he NEVER wanted to know. Like Giselle's sexual escapades, José's nightly Zumba dances, and how Austin had way too many tacos for his bowels to handle. 

He hated it. 

He hated hearing the cars and trains blare through the deepest parts of his skull. He hated the way his sweaters scratched his skin till it boiled red. He hated the migraines that intense fluorescent lights pushed onto him. He hated the full-body dousing adrenaline he got as a suspicious person sat across from him on the subway. 

He wanted it to end, but it only grew stronger as the days progressed. Not just Peter's senses, he grew stronger too. 

Peter swung his backpack over his shoulders on day two and miscalculated the trajectory... slightly.  Now, he needed to ducktape the entire thing back together. He punched the crosswalk light on day three, his finger piercing through the poor button without Peter even breaking a sweat. 

There was more. He stuck to things, literally. The walls, doors, the floor, the ceiling, really anything that he could touch with either his feet or his hands. It seemed to be his fingers, not his palms, and the soles of his feet, not his toes—which made absolutely no sense, but none of this did. It also didn't get any less intense after putting on shoes or gloves; the stick seemed to travel right through. 

Absolutely cheating, Peter concluded. 

But by far the strangest part, and yes, there was a 'strangest' part to all of this shit, was... the webs. Peter nearly fainted the first time he saw two small indents on his wrists, right under his palms. He actually did faint when he reached for his toothbrush up in the bathroom vanity and, instead of his usual spiel of clamoring onto the counter, a thin white string shot out from his wrists. He woke up on the tiled floor with his toothbrush on the floor beside him, the fiber bridging his brush and his hands.

It sounded as bad as it was.

Groaning, Peter rolled out of his warm bed. He sluggishly rubbed at his eyes while moving to the kitchen to get some water. Only when Aunt May didn't wake from her slumber, did Peter realize how quiet he'd become. Usually, his thunderous footsteps were a dead giveaway to his any movement, but those were gone. 

Peter silently placed the now empty cup in the sink, feeling a peculiar tingle in his arms. It wasn't the same as his... 'sense' of danger in the subway. This was new. It tugged at the soles of his feet and urged him down the hall. It promised something Peter couldn't ignore as it whispered in his ears to open his aunt's door and slip into the room. Despite the darkness, Peter saw Aunt May sleeping soundly on her side of the bed, Uncle Ben's half vacant and untouched. 

He looked away, the whisper thrusting his sadness far in the back of his mind as it laid out a path for him. Peter followed the feeling to the extra storage closet, hesitating only for a breath before carefully opening it. The teen crouched down and let the feeling pull his hand through the crevices between boxes, underneath old summer jackets, and past Ben's belongings. He froze when he made contact with the feeling's origin. It felt like cold metal against the skin of his palm, with multiple appendages that leapt out from the main body. 

One, two, three, four, and four on the other side. It was symmetrical, then. His finger grazed two sharp points. He froze with a sharp inhale, but the metal didn't spring to action like he feared.