Note: this chapter is also moderately changed as well, especially during the flashback scene.
Chapter Four- A Sticky Situation
"Peter?" A soft voice sounded from somewhere in the apartment. "Peter is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me," his brow creased with worry. "Where are you?"
"In here," her voice was coming from the room off to the left. Cautiously, he walked over and entered what could only be her bedroom. It was surprisingly cheery- blue walls with cream curtains and soft, oriental artwork covering the walls. A huge, tan dog lay snoozing on the bed, and didn't even bat and eye as he entered the room. Yet no Madison.
Peter walked around the side of the bed. Not there. He let his gaze fully sweep the room. It appeared to be empty.
Slowly, and with a very sick feeling in his stomach, Peter tilted his head back and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
Madison hung there, both hands firmly planted, one slightly on top of the other. Her face was slightly pale, and she looked tired.
"How long have you been up there?" Peter asked, twisting his head so he could look at her straight.
"Oh, I don't know," she shrugged. "All day," she gave a fruitless tug on her hands. "I'm stuck."
"I can see that," Peter sounded calm, but inside he was freaking out. What did this mean? Maybe it was coincidence, maybe it was all one big misunderstanding.
Then his gaze fell upon the small, trampled blue and red blob on the carpet. His face crumpled. Maybe not.
Damn.
"Ummm, Peter," Madison's voice focused his attention back to the real world. "Do you think you could help me down somehow, if it wouldn't be too much trouble?" Her strange, ironic quirk of irritating humor was still there.
"Oh yeah, sure," he glanced around, not really willing to just throw caution to the wind and crawl up the wall to get her down, and spied a large dresser just a few feet from where she was stranded. Getting one foot up on it, he leaned out to where she was hanging and grabbed her around the middle, yanking her unceremoniously off of the ceiling. Both of them fell to the floor and would have landed in a rather painful heap if it hadn't been for Peter's spider abilities. He easily twisted his body so that he landed perfectly on the floor, standing up, with a somewhat dazed Madison situated in his arms, huge pieces of the ceiling still stuck to her hands.
Madison simply glanced at him with raised eyebrows, her gaze probing. Flushing slightly, he placed her on the ground and turned away, trying to avoid those questioning eyes.
Sighing, Madison sat down at the edge of the bed, staring at her hands and only somewhat successfully peeling large chunks of ceiling from them. After a moment of silence she gave up and decided to speak.
"Something bit me the night before last while I slept," she began in a soft voice.
Peter spun around to face her, taking in her appearance for the first time. Now that he was paying attention her change was blaringly obvious. She was visibly stronger; her frame didn't have that delicate, breakable look about it anymore, and . . .
Peter raised an eyebrow and marched over to her, grabbing her arm and lifting her to her feet. Instead her head falling where it normally fell, right at his chest, he was now . . .
Looking her straight in the eye.
"You've gotten taller," he muttered, stepping back to take a good look about her.
She smirked. "Yeah, well, that's not the only thing that's grown."
Peter blushed as he realized what she meant- her shirt was now way too small for her. To change the subject, Madison reached up and unwound her hair from the thick knot it was in at the base of her neck.
"Look at this," she let her hair fall, and it trailed to her thighs.
He gawked at her. "Wha . . . " he sputtered. What was this? The height, the hair, none of this had ever happened to him. He stared at her hair, it must have grown at least . . .
"3 and a half feet," she pronounced. "And I grew 5 inches," she placed the ruler down and her feet, then sank back down on the bed, an uncharacteristic fearful look crossing her face. "What's going on, Peter? What the HELL is going on?"
Peter just stared at the new Madison, lost for words. Then, trickles of the speech he had overheard two days ago at Oscorp started to filter through his head.
'Over the past year, the scientists here at Oscorp have made vast genetic improvements on even our most amazing 'Super Spiders.' We have been able to activate latent hormonal glands to make them bigger, stronger, and faster then before . . . '
"Oh shit," he muttered, looking her over. That spider was different, it must have been enhanced to stimulate growth and hormonal glands. Not just to be stronger but taller, and even hair and most likely nails were affected. His gaze flickered to the wastebasket, which was littered with nail clippings. Fervently he hoped that the sudden growth was temporary, which it appeared to be, seeing that her nails were still a normal length after being stuck on the ceiling all day.
Peter started to pace, aggravated and running one hand through his hair. If this meant what he thought it meant . . . But God! Of all things, of all people! It had to be Madison. Madison? Madison Avenue???
Just his luck.
He realized after a moment that she was watching him, staring through him with those piercing, unsettling green eyes. He took a deep breath and stared back, fiercely refusing to break eye contact. She smiled grimly for a moment and then turned away, staring at her hands.
"Who are you?" She asked in the softest voice he had ever heard her speak.
"I . . . I can't tell you that now," he chose his words carefully. "Not until I know what's going on."
She glanced back up at him. "I suppose you know what's happening to me?" she asked.
He stared silently at her.
She sighed, aggravated. "I suppose that you want to hear my version of the story?"
After a brief pause he nodded.
Taking a deep breath, she began, starting with the night after the Oscorp visit, covering the spider bite, her attempt to get to the phone, and her passing out on the kitchen floor. Then she paused, unsure of how to describe the events that took place the following morning. Pursing her lips, she spoke carefully, picking and choosing just what to say to best depict her emotions that morning.
"When I woke the next morning, everything was different. The world was clearer somehow, and everything . . . everything seemed fresher. It was as if I had never truly lived my life until that moment, and I loved it . . . "
xxxFlashback
Madison woke with a start on the cold linoleum floor to find that someone was kissing her. No, licking her. Raising her head slowly, she blinked and glanced around.
A huge pink tongue slopped across her face.
"Down Ramses," she muttered, patting her huge tan dog. "I'm fine."
The dog cocked his head at her as a low whine issued from his throat. Smiling reassuringly, Madison stood and stretched, amazed at how good she felt after spending a night on her kitchen floor.
Yawning, Madison padded to her bedroom, unconsciously reaching to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose, only to find that they weren't there, and that her nails were scraping against her skin long before her hand even reached her face.
Madison blinked. "Huh?" she muttered, for the first time noticing that something was different. Slowly she held out her hand and found herself staring at nails that were at least five inches long, sticking out of her fingers like ill assorted weapons. Madison felt her mouth drop open. "How on earth?" she gasped, waggling her fingers in the air in an eerie Edward Scissorhands-like fashion. Stumbling over to the kitchen drawer, Madison yanked out a large pair of scissors and proceeded to hack at her newfound appendages until they were reasonably under control. Feeling somewhat better, Madison was still trying to figure out the mystery of the sudden nail growth when she realized that she still wasn't wearing her glasses. She gazed around, and the kitchen that stared back was in 20/20 crystal clarity. What was going on?
A small tendril of fear was working its way through her stomach as she raced to the large mirror that served as a closet door, her limbs flying with uncharacteristic awkwardness through an apartment that suddenly seemed too small. Flinging it open, Madison stared in shock.
She was tall! Slowly Madison turned in a circle as she examined her ill fitting clothing and her long, Godiva-esque hair, and after a moment a smile began to break over her face. Shrieking and whooping like a crazy person, she leapt on the bed and did a dance as her fear dissipated and the realization of these amazing physical changes hit her.
"I can see! I can see! Holy crap, I have freakin' 20-20 vision!" She jumped up and down on her bed, chanting "I got tall, I can see! I got tall, I can see!"
Clamoring off of the bed, Madison stared once more into the mirror with a calmer newly critical eye. Studying herself, she was sad to admit that she hadn't turned into some stunningly beautiful Amazon woman. Though she was taller, her body now had an unfeminine masculinity to it, and her new, fuller chest didn't quite fit with the natural sharp angles of her body and face. In fact, it seemed to accentuate the sharpness of her features, her prominent cheekbones and jaw line and pointed shoulders standing out even more defiantly than before.
Suddenly calm, she glanced at the clock and realized that she was late for work. "Shit!" she cursed, terrified at the thought losing part of her paycheck. Yet even as she hurried to get dressed, her mind was still on the events that had just occurred.
The spider. It had to be the spider. That was the only thing that made sense. And wasn't that Oscorp place all about genetic research?
'So, Madison Avenue,' she thought with a touch of humor as she stepped up on a chair and onto her ceiling high dresser, trying to reach a favorite hat sitting there. 'You've just been bitten by a genetically enhanced spider and have grown tremendously,' she wobbled a bit, and quickly put her hand on the ceiling to steady herself. 'So what does that make you?'
Suddenly her face fell as she realized that the hand wouldn't budge.
'Obviously really, really screwed.'
Hissing in frustration, Madison stupidly thwacked her other hand on the wall next her stuck one and tried to use that force to help pull it off, but all that that did was get her other hand securely stuck as well.
"Shit!" she yelled angrily. For 10 minutes she pulled, yanked, and succeeded in accidentally knocking the chair out from under her legs, so that she was forced to cling to the ceiling for dear life as her dog howled beneath her.
'Really, really screwed.'
xxxx
"I hung there for hours. Finally Ramses just gave up and went to sleep. I was so scared, Peter," he knew that this was a big thing to admit for her. "I was scared of what was happening to me, what would happen if no one came to find me," her eyes seemed to dull as she stared off into space and shivered. "God, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along, Peter."
He realized how hard it must have been for her to hang there, motionless, for hours. Even so, he knew better than to try to comfort Madison. Watching her for a moment, he smiled slightly at her characteristic strengthening of character as she straightened herself up and tucked her emotions safely away. Smiling, she turned to him. "Why does it seem that I always get emotional when you're around?"
"I don't know," his face cracked a grin. "Maybe I bring out the more human side in you."
She raised an eyebrow and smirked. "I don't think that anybody is that much a miracle worker," then her face fell as she turned serious again. Peter knew what she was thinking about.
"I've told you my story, now why don't you tell me yours, Superhero."
He glanced at her. "What makes you think I have a story to tell?"
"Call it a writer's intuition."
He sighed and began to pace again, knowing that his suspicions were confirmed.
"Nearly a year ago I was in Oscorp on a class field trip," he began hesitantly, unsure of where to start. She gave him an encouraging nod. "While there I got bitten by a genetically enhanced spider, one very much like the one that just bit you."
Her face registered surprise- whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't this. "What are you trying to tell me, Peter?" she asked softly.
He took a deep breath and turned to face her.
"Madison, I'm . . . I'm Spiderman."
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