I had so much fun writing this chapter :)

Chapter 16: Welcome to the Club

Peter woke up with a fever. As a kid, he caught almost every bug that ever went through the school, so the sensation was a familiar one. He threw back the damp sheets and rolled out of bed to go look for ibuprofen. Peter intended to land on his feet after rolling out, but instead landed on his knees, and then his face. His entire body ached like it never had before, a constant dull throb radiating from the back of his neck. He brought a hand to the spot and immediately retracted it as his fingers met hot skin stretched impossibly thin over a massive lump of swelling. Shit. The spider bite. He knew he should've reported it to Mr. Stark. Maybe its deadly venom was well on its way to killing him.

Bitten by an experimental spider. What a cool way to die.

The carpet around and under him was now soaked in sweat. Peter rolled over onto a fresh swath of flooring, wincing as the lump on his neck brushed against the floor. He opened his eyes and blinked as the room around him came into focus. The moonlight streaming in from the window provided enough brightness for him to make out the shapes of the furniture and knick-knacks around the room. Except…they all came completely into focus, which normally never happened until he put his glasses on. Peter slapped a hand to his face to check that he hadn't somehow fallen asleep with them on, but his face was bare.

"What the fuck," he whispered.

He rolled over again and forced himself to his feet. The head rush that followed nearly sent him right back to the floor, but he managed to catch himself against the bed and make his way to the light switch. Peter flicked on the lights and hissed as the brightness sent stabbing pain through his eyeballs. Slowly, he opened them again and looked around. He could read every single poster on the walls without squinting.

"What the fuck."

This had to be a dream. Peter decided that he would drink some ice water to try and cool off a bit and just go back to sleep. He'd wake up, and everything would be normal again. He tiptoed into the kitchen, grabbed a random glass off the table, and ripped the faucet handle right off when he went to turn it on. Peter stared, dumbfounded, at the severed object in his hand, before gently setting it down beside the sink. He went into the bathroom and used only his pinky finger to turn this one on. Thankfully, it remained intact. Peter drank half a glass, then went back to his bedroom. He collapsed face-first against the pillow and kicked his sheets the rest of the way to the bottom of the bed. Still uncomfortably hot, he wiggled out of his shirt and threw it on the floor. The effort exhausted him enough to pass out right then and there.

~0~

He woke up and immediately placed his hand on the back of his neck. The lump was gone. The sheets had dried. He felt completely fine. It must've been a dream. Except, his shirt was still on the floor, and the empty glass still stood on his nightstand. A quick glance around the room proved his vision was still miraculously fixed. Peter threw on a new shirt, raced downstairs to the kitchen and found the broken faucet exactly where he'd left it. So it wasn't a dream. He really woke up with a high fever and the spider bite swollen to impossible proportions.

"Morning, Peter," Mr. Stark greeted. Peter startled and turned around to find him sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.

"M-morning."

"Do you happen to know anything about the kitchen faucet? And how it ended up detached from the sink?"

Peter said nothing.

"Last time something like this happened, Steve was angry and too young to properly control his super strength. But I know for a fact Steve's been asleep downstairs since last night, and last night the faucet was intact."

"I did it," he blurted out. There was no use in lying. Mr. Stark was too smart to fall for any story Peter could weave in the next two minutes.

"You broke the faucet?"

"Yeah. I don't know how, I just went to turn it on and it ripped off."

Mr. Stark took another sip of his coffee. "Interesting."

"I'm sorry. It was an accident."

"Where are your glasses?"

"Huh?"

"I've never seen you up and about without your glasses on."

"I must've forgotten to put them on."

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Why do people always ask that? I can see shapes, they're just fuzzy." Well, they used to be.

Mr. Stark shrugged.

"Good morning." Aunt May came downstairs into the kitchen.

"Morning, May."

"How'd you know it's me?" she asked teasingly. "You're not wearing your glasses."

Peter rolled his eyes. Did he risk telling them that his vision had magically corrected itself? That in conjunction with his accidentally breaking the faucet would make even May suspicious. "I recognized your voice," he said.

"Go get dressed, you're gonna be late for school," she prompted.

Peter returned to his bedroom. He tried his glasses on, just to double check that he wasn't crazy, and his vision immediately turned as blurry as it usually was without glasses. "Definitely not wearing these," he muttered, tossing them back onto the nightstand. Glancing down, he realized he'd thrown on this shirt backwards, so he took it off to flip it around and yelped in terror. He startled so hard that he backed into the corner of the room, and continued to back up until he reached the junction between the walls and the ceiling.

Now this had to be a dream.

Peter's chest heaved with his every panicked breath. He was on the wall right now, without any sort of climbing equipment. Only his own bare hands and feet. How the hell was this possible? Peter tried to jump down, but he couldn't unstick his hands from the wall. Biting back a call for help, he tried to steady his breathing and figure out what to do from here. He decided to focus on one hand at a time. Three deep breaths later, he pulled his left hand away from the wall. The change in points of contact set him off balance, and his upper body pitched forward until he caught himself against the ceiling. Now with three limbs on the wall and one on the ceiling, he was just as stuck as when he started.

He focused next on his other hand, which also ended up on the ceiling as soon as it unstuck from the wall. All he needed to do now was unstick his feet and then drop from the ceiling. Easy, peasy. Peter took a deep breath and kicked off the wall. He swung precariously, but his hands stayed on the ceiling. In fact, only his fingertips contacted the surface, and somehow that was enough to support his entire bodyweight. A bodyweight that must've changed since last night because he had abs now. That was the sight that had initially startled him onto the wall. He wasn't built like Steve or anything, but his skin now rippled with lean muscle where he'd once been just plain scrawny.

What's happening to me?

His momentum finally brought him to a stop, dangling from the ceiling by his fingertips. Peter closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and dropped. He landed painlessly on the floor, and even stuck it.

"Peter! You're gonna be late!" Steve's voice called from downstairs.

"Shit!" Peter scrambled to put his shirt on—the right way this time—and grabbed his backpack before racing downstairs.

"You good?" Pietro asked, probably regarding his frazzled appearance.

"Fine."

"You look…different," Wanda said.

"I'm fine," he insisted. "Let's go."

"Alright, one, two, three, supers and a Peter." Happy counted them off as he grabbed the car keys. "Off you go."

As they filed out the door, Peter thought Happy might've miscounted. He stared at his fingertips which had stuck him to the ceiling not five minutes ago and wondered if these changes would be permanent. Secretly, he hoped they were. Having spent the last few months interacting with three superpowered step-siblings, he noticed his own mediocrity more so than ever. If he really was superhuman, what would happen then?

~0~

Peter didn't say much on the ride to school. Happy kept eyeing him suspiciously every time they hit a red light, even going so far as to ask if he was feeling okay.

"I'm fine," Peter said, maybe too quickly. "I feel great."

"You're being uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal," Steve said.

"Where on Earth did you learn that expression?" Wanda asked.

Steve shrugged. "It's something Natasha says."

Peter looked out the window and kept his hands in fists in his hoodie pocket so they couldn't accidentally get stuck to anything. When they arrived, he opened the passenger door with as few fingers and as little pressure as possible to avoid a repeat of the faucet incident.

"Have a good day!" Happy called after them.

"We will! Thanks!"

Peter put his hands back in his pocket and marched into school. Right away, he noticed the chatter of numerous conversations around him didn't blend into meaningless background noise like it usually did. He could make out every word of every person within earshot.

"Okay, but it has a lot of pockets! It's so cool, right?"

"Laters, gators!"

"I'm gonna make some weird shit."

"So I just started singing Hotel California. I mean, fully belting it out right in his face."

"Happy is a kick in the balls waiting to happen."

"I actually did bite a kid once."

"So Back to the Future's a bunch of bullshit?"

"I'm listening."

"Since when is a shortcut cheating?"

"Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it."

"I'm fluent in Google Translate."

"Whoa, did you get contacts?"

Peter startled as the familiar voice burst through the throng of others. Shuri was staring at him, wide-eyed and eager.

"Yes," he said, because that was more believable than the truth he still didn't understand.

"Why didn't you tell me you were getting contacts?"

"I…wanted it to be a surprise."

"Cool. Do you like them so far?"

He shrugged. "It's a hard habit to break, wearing glasses all the time. Feels weird without them." That was probably the least weird sensation he was currently experiencing, but still noticeable. His face felt dangerously exposed. Peter glanced around and noticed Alex emerging from a door that he was pretty sure led to the basement.

"You look good."

"I didn't look good before?"

"No, I just mean you don't look worse than before. Just different."

"You really know how to deliver a compliment."

"So I've heard. Let's go before we're late to homeroom."

Peter heard almost every word spoken by every single person they passed on the way to Mr. Pym's classroom. The fluorescent lights were too bright, and he could hear them buzzing too. A low-grade headache began to throb across his entire brain. It only got worse once he entered homeroom and the noise of fourteen people echoed in one small classroom. Peter put his head down on his desk and discreetly covered his ears.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and a chill stronger than any he'd ever felt before raced down his spine. Peter's head shot up and he reflexively scooted his chair to the left just in time for Quill to lean his chair back just a bit too far and topple to the ground, spilling into the space that Peter had just occupied not half a second ago.

"I'm okay!" Quill assured. Most of the class just stared in stunned silence, but Loki and Kingo were openly laughing at him.

"Quick reflexes, Peter," Pietro remarked dryly.

"Thanks," Peter squeaked. He had absolutely no idea why he thought to scoot away. Before yesterday, he was much more likely to be the one to fall out of his seat, not the one to miraculously dodge a classmate.

Pietro and Wanda exchanged a suspicious glance. Peter returned his chair to its original position in front of his desk and avoided their gazes. Suddenly, his right arm came up to catch something hurtling towards his head. He narrowly avoided taking a pencil to the forehead like a javelin. Peter stared at his fist wrapped around the pencil, mesmerized. A muttered Sokovian curse word had him looking back at his siblings.

"What was that for?" he asked Pietro, who had clearly just thrown the pencil.

Wanda tilted her head and furrowed her brows at him. "How'd you do that?"

"I don't know. Lucky catch, I guess." He tossed the pencil underhand back to Pietro.

The bell saved him from any more interrogation. Mr. Pym counted heads, they listened to the morning announcements, and then left for first period.

"Did Tony Stark hook you up with some sort of high-tech invisible armor?" Shuri asked on their way to chem.

"No."

"There's no way you could've caught that pencil otherwise. You didn't even see Pietro throw it. I was looking right at him and I didn't even see him throw it."

If Mr. Stark found out that Pietro had used his superspeed to lob a pencil at Peter who then demonstrated super reflexes, they'd both be in enormous trouble.

"I just got lucky," he insisted.

"So if I threw another pencil at you, you wouldn't be able to catch it without looking?"

"Please don't throw anything at me. You know, I shouldn't have to say that to a person."

"You're right, you're right. I'll stop. But it was super cool."

"My five seconds of fame are over."

"Yours might be, but I know Quill's going to be living that fall down for the next month at least. Theater kids have long memories."

"They have to. Gotta learn all those lines," Peter remarked. He wished he had a script memorized for how to deal with whatever was happening to him right now.

~0~

As soon as they got home from school and dumped their backpacks in the lab, Wanda, Pietro, and Steve cornered him. Peter hadn't been holding out much hope that the twins would keep what they saw in homeroom a secret from their brother, but it still sucked to know he was stuck explaining something he had no idea how to explain.

Steve was giving him the Eyebrows of Disappointment, mixed with just a bit of suspicion. "You said you would tell us and Mr. Stark if you started to feel weird from that spider bite."

"I feel fine." Actually, his head still hurt from a full day of bright lights and constant noise. But they didn't need to know that.

"You're different. It's obvious. Something happened after that bite. So spill it."

"Fine!" There was no way he could sustain this illusion without destroying himself from the inside out. "I think…I think the spider bite gave me superpowers."

Utter silence ensued. Peter half expected them to start laughing at him because the notion was so preposterous. A spider bite giving him superpowers. Everybody knows that spider bites cause pain and maybe death. Superpowered metamorphosis? They should all be laughing.

"What can you do?" Pietro asked. "Besides catch pencils."

Peter had exactly zero practice controlling his new powers—if that was even what they were. Every time so far, things had happened purely by accident. And now he was being asked to explain or demonstrate to a trio of supers who spent hours every week honing their abilities. Peter took a deep breath and stood before the nearest wall. He focused only on his destination: the ceiling. Without even looking, he placed his fingertips against the wall and started climbing. His finger pads and the balls of his feet stuck easily. The hardest part was getting them unstuck to continue his ascent. Still, it took only thirty seconds for his head to bump the ceiling way harder than he intended it to. Beneath him, Pietro snickered.

Peter placed his hands on the ceiling and turned to face his siblings, dangling as if from monkey bars. He hung there for a few moments, and then willed his hands to unstick, landing far more gracefully than he intended, somehow. Without a word, Wanda snatched his wrist and brought his hand up to her eyes to scrutinize. "There's nothing there, I looked," he told her. No visible change to his skin accompanied the stickiness. And his toes still stuck even though he had shoes on. None of it made any sense whatsoever.

"So you have insane reflexes and you can…stick to walls," Pietro summarized.

"Yeah. And all my senses feel like they're dialed up to eleven." He explained what happened last night with the bite and the fever, and everything he'd experienced since then.

"We have to tell Mr. Stark," Steve said. "You're in danger now. Just like us."

Peter hadn't even thought about that. Wanda, Pietro, and Steve worked so hard to break the habit of using their powers because if they got caught in public, there's no telling what horrors could come of it. He'd seen the same horrid black-and-white images from the Standardization that Mr. Stark had apparently shown a younger Wanda, Pietro, and Steve to discourage them from taking risks with their abilities. Death was only one of many equally horrible possibilities.

"Oh my god."

"Yeah, it's not all it's cracked up to be," Wanda said flatly.

Honestly, Peter was just as afraid of Mr. Stark's reaction to finding out he had powers. And what about May? "Oh my god, May's gonna flip," he stammered. She lectured him all the time on staying away from danger, and now it would follow him everywhere. Peter was a notoriously awful secret-keeper, how was he supposed to survive like this? None of his siblings offered any reaction whatsoever.

The elevator doors opened. "Who died?" asked Mr. Stark. "You all look so grim."

Peter turned around with a jolt. How come his new super reflexes hadn't alerted him to this? Stupid Mr. Stark and his seamless, silent tech.

"Your spider bit Peter and now he has powers," Steve reported.

"Excuse me?"

"It's true," Wanda concurred.

"He's super now," added Pietro.

Mr. Stark's eyes trained on Peter. He offered an explanation by hanging off the wall with only his fingertips and one foothold. "Do that again," Mr. Stark instructed. Peter did it one better, repeating his wall climb to ceiling hang. "And just how, pray tell, did my colleague's spider—which has been in its enclosure since it got here—come to bite you?"

The four of them proceeded to rehash the story of the spider's escape and their attempts to recapture it. "It was a total accident," Peter concluded, out of breath.

"I see."

He waited for an angry outburst, or a demand he go to the hospital to be evaluated or something. Mr. Stark offered only silence.

Peter was afraid this would happen. This spider bite situation would be the final straw that broke the camel's back of this weird, strained dynamic between them. Mr. Stark would want Peter completely out of his life and his house, and May would have to choose between the two of them. He couldn't even tell which was worse; May choosing Mr. Stark and abandoning him, or her choosing him and living with the guilt of knowing he was the reason she couldn't be with the man she loved.

"That's the last time I pet-sit for Osborn," Mr. Stark grumbled.

"So you were pet-sitting!" Pietro exclaimed.

He rolled his eyes. "What am I going to do with you?"

Peter couldn't tell if he was talking about Peter specifically or all of their collective antics.

"This goes without saying, Peter, but all their safety rules now apply to you too. No using powers in public. No sports. And now you also have to keep up with your training, just like them."

"Is…that all?" Peter asked, still convinced he was going to be punished.

"Is there something else you want to tell me?"

"No! That's all. No other symptoms to report."

"Good. I'll see you all at dinner." And with that, he left.

Pietro slapped Peter on the back. "Welcome to the club, brat."

"That's Sokovian for brother," Wanda clarified.

"Shhhh, I was gonna let him figure that out."

"Shit! I still have to tell May."