A/N: Happy Homecoming Eve! Enjoy the chapter!

Web of Spider-Man
#5: Showboat Part 2
"Responsibility"

…

"This better be good. I've got like six Pre-Calc assignments to catch up on," Harry said, taking the steps of the apartment complex two at a time.

"You'll thank me later," Peter replied, leading the way onto fifth floor. "Also, if my aunt asks, we're working on an APUSH project."

"I'm not even in APUSH," Harry pointed out.

"She doesn't know that," Peter said with a sly grin.

After unlocking the door to their apartment, Peter led Harry through the kitchen and into his bedroom. On the way, they ran past May, who greeted the redhead with a simple, "Harry! How are you?"

"Great, Mrs. Parker. How's your book coming along?" Harry asked.

"Sadly, not all that well. Had a bad case of writer's block for the last—"

"Sorry to interrupt, May, but we have a lot of work and not a lot of time to do it, so…" Peter's voice faded off as he tugged on Harry's sleeve, pulling him away.

"Let us know if you need anything!" May called.

"Thanks!" Peter yelled back, shutting the door after them.

Harry leaped over onto Peter's bed, landing with a thump, then motioned his friend along. "So, what's up? You said you had something important to show me?"

Peter grinned, tossed his glasses aside, and took a step back. Wordlessly, he flipped up onto the ceiling, sticking to it with both his feet and hands. Harry watched him, slack-jawed, at a loss for words.

"Pretty cool, right?" Peter said.

"How…you're a mutant?" Harry mumbled, dumb struck.

"I don't think so." Peter dropped back down to the ground, landing effortlessly on his feet. "I mean, maybe. Thing is, I got bit by this big ass spider at the party. Totally zonked out."

"And you woke up with super powers," Harry nodded, lost in thought, "You can climb on walls." He paused, then looked up with a crooked grin. "Have you, y'know…peed white?"

Peter smirked. "I can't pee webbing, no."

"And have you jacked off? Seen if you—"

"Jesus, Harry, I can't—I can't make webs. End of story," Peter stammered.

"Well, that's something to work on," Harry said.

Silence fell over the two of them for a few moments. A thought lodged itself into Peter's mind. He couldn't shake it. In fact, he didn't want to. As a smile crept over his lips, he nudged his friend.

"Hey, my aunt won't check on us for at least an hour. You wanna…?" Peter motioned over to the window.

Harry grinned. "Hell. Yes."

…

Peter dry swallowed. He took a deep breath, trying and failing to muster courage. Eyes on the twenty-foot gap between the apartment complex's roof and the small office building next door, he shook his head.

"Uh uh. No way. I can't do this," Peter said.

"C'mon. Have some cajones. Jump," Harry pushed, his smartphone raised, recording.

"You're not Snapping this, right?" Peter asked.

"Nope. This is just for you and me," Harry agreed.

"Okay. Okay," Peter tried to hype himself up, "I got this. It's not that far. Think hardcore parkour, hardcore parkour…"

He backed up to the edge of the roof, then sprinted forward, quickly picking up speed.

"HARDCORE PARKOUR!"

He pushed off with both feet, only to catch his right ankle on the raised edge of the roof. That instantly flipped him over the edge, dropping him down a path toward pavement and a pancake-shaped future. His head buzzed like crazy, drowning out Harry's screams. Survival instincts kicked into overdrive, Peter reached out to the wall of the apartment complex, managing to skim it with two of his fingers. They stuck to it for a split second, flipping Peter so he was hanging feet first, before they gave way, tearing off paint. In a last ditch effort, Peter contorted his body so that he could kick off the wall with his sneakered feet. That sent him soaring toward the office building where he managed to stick the landing, literally.

As Peter took a deep breath to calm himself, Harry looked down over the edge and sighed in relief.

"Oh, thank God. Are you alright?"

Peter shouted back, "Yeah! Just a little shook. Did you get any of that?"

It took Harry a moment to remember he still had his phone in his hand before he looked down at it, chuckling as he shook his head. "I was a little distracted by you plummeting to your death."

Peter laughed, "Fair enough."

Then, with the utmost ease, he crawled up to the roof of the office building and looked back over at Harry. Oddly enough, his near death experience had given him confidence. If he could survive that, then certainly he could make the jump.

"I want to try it again."

"Be careful, man," Harry replied.

"Yes, mother," Peter teased, backing up.

This time, he didn't trip. Peter leaped off the roof and over to the apartment complex. Better yet? He landed a dozen yards onto the roof well past Harry. There was no doubt in his mind he could make considerably longer jumps.

"YES!" Peter yelled.

"Dude, check this out." Harry ran over to Peter and showed him the footage of his jump. "You've got freaking superpowers!"

"FUCK YES!" Peter cheered, pumping his fist into the air.

Half an hour later, Peter had pushed himself to his limits. He'd leaped dozens of roofs, flipped his way between walls, and done acrobatic maneuvers off air vents. For all his lack of training, he looked like a professional athlete. One with superpowers, no less.

In all that time, Harry recorded him half a dozen times and took countless pictures. One of the photos in particular stood out to Peter, who looked it over as he sat on the edge of the roof. The aforementioned image had been taken by Peter with Harry's phone: a selfie that zeroed in on him soaring through the air, a toothy grin on his face. However, because the background was all sky it was unclear exactly how high up he was. For all intents and purposes, Peter could have been on ground-level, jumping at a completely normal height.

"Could you text me that pic?" Peter asked, handing the phone back to Harry.

"Yeah, no problem," his friend replied, completing his request. "Done."

"Thanks, man," Peter said, cloud-gazing.

With the breeze gently caressing his skin and all of New York stretched out before him, Peter felt at peace. Happiness like this rarely lingered. He treasured the moment, etching it into his memory.

It didn't get much better than this.

…

By this point, Peter realized whenever his head buzzed it was a sign of bad things to come. Danger more likely than not. In this case, the danger was his aunt and uncle, who awaited his return in his room with their arms crossed and the sort of disapproval in their eyes that could make a grown man cry.

"I can explain," Peter began, only for his uncle to interrupt him.

"Don't," Ben demanded, then looked at Harry. "I'm sorry to ask this, but could you leave, son? We need to have a talk with our nephew."

Harry silently nodded, grabbed his backpack, and gave Peter a reassuring look before he left the room. Meanwhile, the oh-so-screwed teen straightened his posture and prepared for the verbal bout to come.

"We were working on the roof—" Peter lied.

"Stop it! Stop lying to us," May blurted, overcome with emotion.

Peter was a bit taken aback, caught somewhere between guilt and anger, but managed to bite back a retort. Ben motioned him over to his bed where he sat down. His aunt and uncle sandwiched him between them. He struggled to decide which one to look at, so instead he allowed his gaze to fall to the floor.

"What you've done," Ben began, his voice steady but firm, "Not just to disobey us, but to lie about it, is completely unacceptable."

"Peter, you're better than this. You know you can talk to us. Is something going on?" May asked, genuinely concerned.

Peter didn't reply, his eyes darkening.

"Son…" Ben placed his hand on Peter's shoulder, only for the boy to shake him off.

"Don't call me that," he spat, but instantly regretted it.

"Peter," Ben continued, hurt, "I know—we both do—that this is a trying time in your life. High school's difficult for anyone, let alone someone who's already gone through as much as you have. Your friends, your hobbies, even your identity can change in a split second. Within the next few years, you'll have to decide what type of man you're going to become. And for someone like you, someone with so much talent and potential, it can be a difficult choice."

He paused for a moment, exchanging a look with May, then said, "You're already smarter than your aunt or I ever was. Heck, we stopped helping you with homework when you entered the seventh grade. So I understand…it can be difficult to relate to us. To trust us. But please, hear me when I say that you can do better than this. Not just in your relationship with us, but your whole life moving forward. I know you're going to be a great man, but whether or not you're good, that's still up in the air. That's up to you."

"We love you, Peter, and we believe in you with all our hearts. That's why we're having this talk. And if you won't listen to us, to me, then maybe at least you'll respect your father," Ben said.

That caught Peter's attention. He met his uncle's gaze, allowing him to finish.

"My brother, he had a saying. Words he lived by. With great power there must also come great responsibility. I'd…I'd like you to think about that," Ben finished.

He stood up. May took a moment to look over Peter, as if in search of a crack, a hint of pain. The sort of vulnerability Peter tried to hide from them most of all. After failing to find anything in his stoic gaze, May got up and followed Ben over to the door.

"You'll have plenty of time to think it over. We're extending your grounding to a month," Ben explained.

"What?" Peter protested, but his aunt and uncle had left his room before he could get more than a word out.

Great power and responsibility? Great piece of bullshit, more like. Peter wasn't Captain America. How the hell did his uncle expect him to be responsible for anyone else when he struggled just being responsible for himself?

Peter collapsed back onto his bed with a sigh and held up his phone. A text from Harry stared back at him. It was that picture. The selfie. Peter felt a grin come on as he opened the message. Then, with a few clicks, he dropped that image into his portfolio and sent the whole shebang to the Crier's email.

If nothing else, at least he had a damn good picture under his belt.

…

Late that night, as his aunt and uncle slept, Peter snuck out and up the fire escape in gym clothes. After making his way to the roof, he steadied himself with a few deep breaths, then backed up to the edge. He shot forward as if fired from a rifle, and sprung off his feet, leaping over to the adjacent office building. From there, he travelled from roof to roof with an enormous grin plastered on his face.

This was the most alive he'd felt in a long time. This was who Peter really was. All joy and passion, his depression lost like his voice in the wind…

"WOOHOO!"

…

Beneath the steady thumping of Peter's shoes, in a rundown apartment complex, Max Dillon scrambled back against the electric blue wall of his home.

"I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean nothing by it," he stammered.

Marching ever closer with murder in her bloodshot eyes was his girlfriend, Tanya, a stocky woman who stood half a head shorter than him.

"You call me lazy, then say you meant nothing by it? What, do you think I'm stupid?" Tanya roared, slapping him.

Max recoiled, unable to look her in the eyes. "N-no. No, I don't—"

"Stop lying to me!" Tanya smacked him again. "Do you think I'm stupid or lazy?"

"Neither! Neither, I swear to God!" Max yelled, crouching down into a protective ball.

"Look at you," Tanya said derisively, glaring down at him. "Get your pansy ass up off the ground."

Max did as he was told, but continued to shrink back into himself. Tanya grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look at her. When she spotted the bruises she'd left on his face, her eyes instantly flooded with concern.

"Oh, honey. What did I do? I'm so sorry," Tanya pulled him into a tight embrace. "You know I love you, babe. I only do this because I want to keep you honest."

"Of course."

"C'mon, hug me," Tanya demanded, her voice fierce again.

Max paused, then slowly crept his hands up the small of her back. For a moment, he considered the idea of wrestling her to the ground. Wrapping his hands around her neck and wringing her dry. Squeezing, squeezing, until there was nothing left, but—

"Tell me you love me, babe," Tanya gently whispered.

Max dead-eyed a spot on the wall where the blue wallpaper was beginning to peel as he said, "I love you, babe."

So...there's some of the darkness I was talking about in the author note after issue 1. Hope it doesn't throw y'all off. Please drop a review if you feel so obliged!

Heart of the Demons: Thanks for reviewing!

boysa boysa: Absolutely cannot comment on Al, other than to say he'll play a large role in the story.