You walk through the halls, thinking about the brief bit of news you heard on the radio before the station was changed and wondering who it was that broke out of prison this time. You're not too concerned about it, unless it was a mass breakout you can most certainly handle one super-villain, but you do have a date tonight and you're worried that they might ruin your special night. It's so rare these days that you're actually on time due to your 'extracurricular activity' but for once you were hoping for a quiet night, you had just had a showdown last night and almost all of the super-villains you know are in jail. Of course, your definition of a quiet night still involves leaping from building to building, dodging gun shots, stopping muggers, and chasing down thugs.
Still, you were hoping for a bit of downtime in order to actually make it to your date. You know MJ expects you to be late but it still disappoints her when you don't show up - whether you're dating or not. Your spider sense tingles ever so slightly and without thinking you step over the foot that had been intended to trip you. It barely even registers in your mind and you keep walking, not even glancing back. Bullies are so low on your scale of things to worry about that your worry is practically nonexistent. They're more of an annoyance than anything and your mind is already back to planning on how to make the date perfect.
Occasionally you do stop yourself from reacting, allowing yourself to be hit or tripped, pretending to be in pain - after getting thrown into walls and punched by people stronger than you a hit from some random guy in college barely registers - but not today. Today you step over the outstretched foot, pretending to be so deep in thought that you didn't even notice it. Hopefully they'll pass it off as a fluke and assume it was just luck you happened to step over it. In truth you are quite deep in thought but ever since you started this hero gig you try to be aware of your surroundings and there's not much that gets by you.
Luck is with you for once and the villain doesn't attack that night. After leaving school you head out on patrol right away, swinging through the streets searching for crime. You help some firefighters out in a burning house, stop a runaway car, and save a pedestrian from getting run over before you find some actual criminals. Your mind is still unfocused and you barely notice the bullets as you dodge them instinctively. The sound of the gun firing brings you back to reality momentarily but the thugs aren't much of a challenge.
You fire off some witty quips as you string them up with your webs and remind yourself to replace your cartridges before you go out on patrol tomorrow but you're still focused on your date. Thugs like these aren't much higher than bullies on your list of things that worry you. For a moment as you swing away you stop to think about how odd it is that thugs with guns only serve to annoy you when before the change you would be running away in terror but dodging bullets is easy and without superhuman strength their punches don't do much, that is, if they could actually manage to hit you.
The patrol continues much in that vein for the rest of the afternoon and before you know it you're finishing up, actually on time to your date for once. The date goes smoothly too, for once you don't manage to mess things up and MJ is pleasantly surprised when you show up at her door with flowers five minutes early. She is even more surprised when you don't disappear halfway through the evening and ends the night with a kiss.
The next day the two of you head to Harry's penthouse to hang out with him and end up on the balcony, Harry and MJ having a laugh at your expense, joking about your lateness and the fact that you were actually on time for once last night. You laugh along with them, recognizing the truth in their words even if they could never understand the reason why, and sit down on the railing - completely oblivious to the fact that most people would be scared of falling so far down. You've fallen from higher and the height doesn't even register in your mind, with your balance the only way you'd fall was if you were pushed and despite Harry's hatred of Spider-Man there are no threats on this balcony. You'd know.
But even if you are oblivious your friends are not and are shocked when you perch yourself on the edge. You laugh it off, acting surprised to see yourself so close to the edge and step away, sitting safely in a chair quite a distance away. As always you feel a slight twinge of guilt as you deceive your friends but you're used to it by now and they believe your act, joking about how your head is always in the clouds. You purposely don't go near the edge for the rest of the visit and your friends forget about the instance easily, passing it off as another one of your quirks. You know you're lucky to have friends like these, who remain with you even when you always run off, and you feel another twinge of guilt when you site homework as your reason for leaving when you hear sirens off in the distance.
It turns out that Electro had been the one to escape prison and chose now to make his move. The two of you engage in battle and not only do you have to worry about yourself but the innocent bystanders. New York is nothing if not crowded and your biggest regret during your battles is that it is practically impossible to take the fight somewhere isolated. One man gets slammed into a wall, causing you to wince in concern, but there's no time for you to stop and check on him before Electro causes more damage. Later during the fight you get a brief respite and glance back at the spot where he fell, glad to see that he is no longer there.
Eventually you manage to beat Electro and trap him. You got banged up during the fight and are worried that you might limp tomorrow despite your fast healing but you've definitely had worse and aren't too concerned about your injuries. Like yesterday you take a moment to consider the oddness of the fact that you're more concerned about people noticing your injuries than you are about the actual injuries themselves, but you shrug it off, accepting it as part of your life. Protecting people is what you do, even if it means hiding parts of yourself. You often entertain yourself or worry about how people in your life - Aunt May, MJ, Harry - would react if they found out but it's something you don't like to focus on - not necessarily because of their reactions, though you are concerned about Harry, but because of the consequences. When the Goblin discovered who you were he went after those you care about and you're not about to let that happen again.
You leave directly after beating Electro and spend a bit longer patrolling but eventually take a break, deciding your wounds need to be tended to before you continue any further.
When you wake up the next day you groan in frustration when you realize that you were correct and that your leg is still injured. You manage to hide your pain quite well you think, making sure to use your injured leg as much as your other leg and only limping when you're alone, and no one at school notices or says a thing. On the other hand you're visiting Aunt May and despite how adept you were at hiding injuries when you lived with her you're a bit out of practice and she calls you out on it. You easily come up with a believable story, another thing that has become second nature to you, but she insists on tending to it anyway. Admittedly you hadn't done much besides wrap it up but knowing how fast your wounds healed you never bothered much with antiseptic. Aunt May does though, cautioning you about the sting as though you were still the little boy you once were - a mother thing because despite the fact she's not your mother she's the woman who raised you. It doesn't bother you though and you think back to your memories, wondering how such a small sting could ever have bothered you.
Pain tolerance is another thing you have to worry about, higher on your list than bullies and average street thugs. Getting slammed into a wall at high speeds hurts. Getting punched in the stomach by people like Flash did not. But that was irrelevant, in both of those situations you had to act in the opposite of what was expected. Despite the pain of getting slammed into a wall you always get up and shrug it off, jumping back into battle. Despite the annoyance of getting hit you always pretend to be in pain, curling up and trying to avoid the next punch. The first reaction doesn't bother you, while most people wouldn't be expected to get up after a hit like that you're not most people and you know there are still people out there to protect. It's the second reaction that you dislike, but again as more of an annoyance than anything else. You're more than capable of sounding and acting like you're in pain, you know exactly what pain feels like, but it's a waste of your time and you'd much rather be elsewhere. You said something similar to Flash once, asking him to hurry up and get it over with because you had things to do, but that was a long time ago. Flash had been so shocked by your casual disregard that he had stopped, leaving you free to go, but you never tried it again - it was too suspicious, too unlike Peter Parker.
Unfortunately you can't always hide your superior reflexes. It has become so instinctive to react quickly because if you didn't that might mean the end of you and you're hesitant to train yourself to not react in certain situations because you never know what might happen. As much as you don't want anyone to notice you're more worried about one day being in a fight and not reacting fast enough, allowing yourself or someone else to get hurt. It's not likely to happen given how fast you react but you know you can't dodge everything and you're not about to stop yourself from reflexively catching something that has been thrown at you, no matter how many odd looks you receive. Like with the bullies, if you have enough foreknowledge you'll purposely get hit, allowing yourself to resemble the clumsy wimpy boy you once were, but some things happen too fast for you to have time to consider not reacting.
You try your hardest to act normal, pretending you don't have superhuman strength or agility, pretending that you can't stick to walls, pretending that your reflexes are terrible, but there are some things that are so instinctive to you that it's hard to stop yourself. As your years as a superhero pass people notice things about Peter Parker. They notice his complete disregard for heights. They notice that he never complains or in fact mentions the bullies that he deals with. They notice that insults seem to just roll off him and that sometimes he even laughs along with the bully, seemingly amused when they call him weak or a coward. People can't help but notice that not much seems to bother Peter Parker. They notice that when bullies approach it's not fear in your eyes but annoyance. They notice your worry when you see complete strangers in danger.
You try your hardest but it's hard to be something you're not. You've got so much to worry about anyway that you don't have time to keep up the facade of being bothered by heights or acting afraid of common bullies.
You've got to worry about your life every day, sometimes struggling just to make it home, not to mention the lives of all the people you protect. You've got to worry about school, and the fact that you're almost always late for class. You've got to worry about your friends and your love life and all the people you care about. You've got to worry about your job and hope no one investigates exactly how you get those pictures. You have to worry about the people of New York turning on you - thanks in part to J. Jonah Jameson and his newspaper.
So, it's hard to pretend to be afraid, whether of heights or bullies. It's hard to feel upset by cheap insults when there are people whose main goal in their life is to end yours. Some days you almost think it's harder to be Peter Parker than Spider-Man because Spider-Man doesn't have to pretend to be bothered.
Authors Note: So this was just a short idea I had because I've never seen anything like it. I'm thinking about doing something similar for other heroes so if anyone wants to see for a particular hero let me know. Also, I'd love it if you could let me know how it turned out, this is the first time I've attempted writing in second person. Thanks for reading!