Chapter Text
Richard and Mary Parker weren’t who they seemed to be. To anyone else, they would’ve appeared to be two retired veterans who had been screwed over by the VA like so many others. Richard had acquired problems with his back and Mary, with her knee. Both chronic injuries-turned-disabilities were barely touched on by the VA, according to the Parkers. And they would tell anyone who would listen that they were, in fact, victims of a corrupted system.
In truth, like others in their positions, they milked their injuries. They stayed high on pain meds, and they collected their disability checks. In their minds, they had it made. All except for a few small issues. Those issues were their children, the actual victims in the Parker household.
Richard and Mary were, in the most eloquent terms, fucked up parents. Their two kids, Teresa and Paige Parker, were stuck in a constant cycle of abuse and neglect throughout childhood. Teresa, the oldest, bore the most responsibility and the worst of the abuse, but Paige had to sit back and watch, which in a way, was worse.
I know what you’re thinking: “I thought this was about Peter Parker? You know, Spider-Man?” And I’ll let you in on a little secret… we’re getting there. If you want to know about the young-adult vigilante, we’ve got to start at the beginning.
Paige and Teresa didn’t only have to worry about their parents, unfortunately. Both of the children, once in school, suffered relentless bullying for the way that they dressed and the way that they acted. Teresa learned quickly. Paige did not.
“Why are they so mean?” Paige asked once in the third grade. She had been sent to the office in tears that day for an incident. When neither of her parents picked up their phones, the administrator finally obliged to Paige’s requests for her sister, who was in the fifth grade. The girls spent almost an hour in a conference room while Teresa talked Paige down.
“They’re just kids.” Teresa said, “They don’t know any better, but they’re learning, just like we are.”
“But we’re just kids,” Paige shot back.
Teresa hated how smart her younger sibling could be. “You’re right, but we know a little more than them. Which makes us older in a way.”
“You’re the older one,” Paige huffed, still embarrassed about crying in front of her whole class. “I wish I could be more like you. Everyone says I’m a crybaby.”
And this was true. Everyone except for Teresa had always scolded Paige for expressing her emotions, whether it be in a healthy way or in an unhealthy way. This created outbursts from the youngest Parker. Outbursts that kids at school were ignorant towards and made fun of.
“You’re not a crybaby. You’re my favorite. And my favorite never has been, and never will be, a crybaby. My favorite is stronger than anyone I know. You’re not scared to show your emotions, and that makes you brave. Never lose that. No matter what. If you want to scream, then scream. If you want to cry, then cry. If you want to throw something, then do it- preferably not at others. Your only job in this world is to be who you are, ka-peesh? It’s just you and me, and that only works if you’re you and I am me.”
But I don’t want to be me, thought Paige. But she didn’t voice that. Instead, she nodded.
The two went back to their classes. Teresa missed her lunch period and recess, but she made no comment towards it.
Paige was eleven when Teresa got her first off-the-books job. The older sibling would have tried to get one sooner, but they both knew why there was a wait. Teresa wanted Paige to be old enough to stay at the house by herself. Their parents were reckless and gone half the time, and there had been… incidences with babysitters before.
For the two, money meant freedom. They could go anywhere, do anything, and buy what they wanted. Obviously, they didn’t go crazy, but they finally found clothes that fit them and didn’t have so many holes or stains. When Paige realized the effects of having money, she wanted a job, too. It took some convincing, but Paige started walking the neighbors’ dogs everyday, “house sitting” when they were away, and an older neighbor even gave her two dollars every day for picking up his mail and bringing it to him.
This was probably the best stage of these kids’ lives. Sure, home was still crap, but at least they got to get out of the house. They didn’t have to worry about food as much, either. And, with their basic needs now better met, school became slightly easier, too. With Paige starting middle school and Teresa a year away from high school, some of the bullying lessened with their age, but the bullies who stayed bullies only got worse. And new-ish clothes and being able to afford going on class field trips helped get them off their backs.
Teresa even began to become popular. Paige didn’t notice it that much at first, but eighth grade was different for Teresa. Boys started asking her out. She declined, obviously, but they continued to ask, nonetheless. Through her work, Teresa was even invited to a few high school parties.
Teresa only went to one of those. That was because a boy, Harley, invited her. She didn’t see what all the fuss was about, and asked him to take her home, which he did.
Harley was older, a Junior at Midtown High School, and he, from what Paige could gather, came from money. He had one of the newest Stark phones and a Stark watch, he was always clean and well mannered, and he once referred to his home as “the penthouse”.
Paige was wary of him at first. He met Teresa while she was working (he came in for a “coffee for a friend” on the way to said friend’s house), and he started coming in every single afternoon after that. Teresa was wary of him, too.
For the longest time, it was just Paige and Teresa, but here came this teenage boy with a southern accent and deep pockets. Paige felt like her relationship with her sister was threatened. Teresa was more worried about keeping the boy at a distance.
Paige warmed up to Harley, though.
One afternoon, while Teresa was working, Paige came in just like she always did, sat down at a booth, and started her homework. It never took her long to finish, but she had trouble setting aside the time to actually DO the homework. What didn’t help this dilemma was when people interrupted her.
Harley came in, saw that Teresa was busy, and decided to strike up a conversation with the younger Parker.
“Multiplying fractions?” He asked.
“Yup.”
“You seem to be going through it pretty fast.”
“Yup,” Paige said again.
“You want me to look over it. Make sure you didn’t miss nothin’?”
Paige fought with every bone in her body not to roll her eyes. “Nope.”
“You seem confident in your work.”
Finally, Paige dropped her pencil down on her workbook and looked up at Harley. “It’s just fractions. It’s not complicated.”
Harley smirked. “Okay, smart one. What’s five over six times twenty-seven over four?”
Without even hesitating, Paige rattled off the answer, “Unsimplified, it's one-hundred thirty-five over twenty-four. Simplified, it’s five and five eighths or forty-five over eight. If you want it as a decimal, it’s five point six two five.”
Harley’s eyes widened slightly, but he didn't back down. They went back and forth for a while. Each time, Harley asked more complicated math questions. Paige didn’t even use a sheet of paper until they got into applied trigonometry, and she didn’t falter until Harley asked an abstract algebra question that he was pretty sure didn't have an answer.
“That’s cheating!” Paige complained after spending ten minutes trying to find the answer to the problem that didn’t have one.
“You two getting along?” Teresa, finally on a break, came over and sat down next to Paige.
“Your friend gave me a question that didn’t have an answer. That’s cheating.”
Teresa looked down at the sheet of paper, which to anyone else, would have looked like absolute chaos. Teresa could see where Paige was going, though.
“So you two have been having a Mathlete practice?” She joked.
“Your sister is smart.” Harley rubbed his temples, nursing a headache. “Like, really smart. Are you in a gifted program or something at the middle school?” He asked Paige.
Paige shook her head, no. “I just spent most of last summer at the library. I picked up a few books on higher-level arithmetic.”
“Well,” he said, “You should be in one. A gifted program. Hell, even a gifted school. That brilliant brain of yours is going to go to waste multiplying fractions.”
Paige’s face went a little red. No one besides Teresa had called her smart before. No one had really noticed. It was at that moment that Paige decided Harley was alright.
Unfortunately, Teresa retreated even more after that interaction. Anytime Harley would bring up things like space camp, gifted programs, testing out of grades, etc. Teresa would find an excuse to leave the conversation. Paige wanted to pretend that she didn’t know why, but the truth was that she did.
The issue came down to money. Now that both of the girls were making money, their parents made even less effort to take care of them. Now, there was never food in the house (not like there was much before), anytime they asked for things like a new toothbrush or more shampoo they were reprimanded, sometimes resulting in physical altercations (which only happened occasionally before), and now that they had money, they had to hide it. Because naturally, their parents were no longer just abusing pain meds, they were on other things. And other things weren’t as forgiving as prescriptions and booze when withdrawals had hit. Their parents were even less forgiving.
But all was fine as long as they stayed out of the house. And Teresa had gotten really good at hiding their money, never all in one place. But anytime Harley brought up something that would cost money and Teresa couldn’t just straight up say that they CAN’T, she put Harley at more of a distance.
It became more obvious to Paige as the school year went on, and she hated how Teresa obviously breathed better when Harley went out of town during Winter Break. Paige hated how Teresa had to hide everything and couldn’t accept any help.
One day towards the end of sixth grade, Paige asked her about it on the way to school. “Why are you so distant with Harley?”
Teresa seemed to know that this question was coming. Still, she didn’t answer for a while. Finally, she said, “You know how the bullies, for the most part, quit messing with us when we got better clothes?”
Paige nodded.
“Do you know why?”
“Because we took away what they were picking on us about,” Paige said.
“Kind of,” Teresa considered her words. “But we didn’t actually get rid of the problem completely. We put a band-aid on it, but they don’t know that. Which is why they started to leave us alone. So if people think everything is okay, they’ll treat us like everything is okay. But that means that we’ve got to make them think that everything is okay. Does that make sense?”
Paige gave a hesitant nod.
“It’s like…” Teresa tried to make her point clearer, but she found it hard to understand it herself. “It’s like a mask. It doesn’t change who we are, but it keeps others from digging deeper. It keeps them from finding out what we don’t want them to know.”
“Is that why you won’t go on a date with Harley?”
Teresa laughs. “No. I haven’t gone on a date with Harley because he hasn’t asked me.”
That took Paige by surprise. People have been wanting a date with her sister for this entire school year. She even heard about a girl that asked Teresa out, hoping that she was gay and that’s why she hasn’t said yes to the guys. “What about the other guys?” Paige asked.
Teresa gave Paige a small smile, “Why would I go on a lame date with some guy when I could be hanging out with you?”
I’m not all that great, Paige thought to herself, but she didn’t say it. Instead, she just smiled at her sister. Paige could put on a mask. She just needed some more practice.
Especially if he wanted to keep his secret from his sister.
...
Paige didn’t become Peter overnight. He just knew that he didn’t belong in his body, and more than anything (almost more than he wanted loving parents) he wanted to be a boy. When they first got the money to buy their own clothes, Peter tried to find the most tom-boyish clothes he could find in the girl’s section. When he scrounged up thirty dollars, he bought his own binder from a downtown shop near the library.
He used to do ace bandages when he first started developing breasts, but three achy days and a quick google search at the library later, he decided that that was a bad idea. He also hadn’t decided on a name at this point, but I think it’s only fair to you to know that the little genius with big emotions and lots of questions would grow up to become Spider-Man.
He did more research. He couldn’t figure out how he would get the hormones he needed at any point before age eighteen, and he couldn’t stand to live in this body, hear this voice, or even be “Paige” for another seven years.
But he created a mask. In his mind, if Teresa could do it, so could Peter. He could figure out how to be as strong as his sister. He could hide behind a mask.