Chapter Text
anachronism (n.)
/əˈnæk.rə.nɪ.zəm/
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an error in chronology; especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regards to each other
example: "They found an anachronism in his explanation."
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a person or thing that is chronologically out of place; especially one from a former era that is incongruous in the present
example: P. Parker.
***
It had been half a year since Penny had come to the realization that she was not a Penny but a Peter, and not a she but a he. It had been half a year since Penny had died privately and been replaced with somebody new entirely, and not a soul had noticed. People like to tell their families that when their daughter turns to a son, their sister turns to a brother, their niece to a nephew, they're still the same person. But Peter and Penny weren't the same person at all.
Penny was a sweet, maybe sometimes a little depressed hardly-teenage girl and really, all she wanted was to fit in. Peter was an angry sort of creature, wanting nothing more than for the world to end and to take him with it. It wasn't Penny that sheared her hair off with a pair of kitchen scissors at three in the morning; it was Peter. It wasn't Penny who was constantly on the verge of beating someone's head in; it was Peter. Peter couldn't tell you why, but he could tell you that, like most things, it was probably his own fault.
There was one person in this world who knew Peter's name, who knew the weight he carried on his shoulders—or at least knew of it, because Peter certainly doubted he actually understood, given the circumstances of the pain that his one confidant would likely never bear the burden of experiencing. Ned Leeds. The one friend Peter had ever had, the one friend Peter had had since the very beginning of his life. Ned hadn't figured it out, simply believing that maybe Peter just got bored of his long, girly hair or wanted to rebel, or maybe he was a lesbian and wanted to attract women, and though he accepted him wholly both before and after finding out the truth, he did have to be directly told.
Either way, he'd been Peter's biggest and sturdiest pillar of support ever since he found out, doing everything he could to support his best friend in any way he could while keeping his secret: only addressing him as "P" or they when in public, letting Peter rant to him in the dead of night, telling Peter that he probably needed a therapist not because he was done with being the one Peter dumped everything on but rather because Peter had just thrown out his entire closet and Ned was a bit concerned that the boy was going to do something that couldn't be fixed with just stealing half of Ned's closet one of these days.
Right now, Peter was lying in bed, sick as a dog, and he had no idea why. Supposedly. If he were going to be honest, he'd tell his aunt and uncle that he'd been bitten by an experimental radioactive spider that escaped its confines in the Oscorp labs. But he wasn't going to be honest because he was not meant to be on that field trip by any means. He was specifically told not to be there after he'd had some very choice words to say to the principal not a week into 8th grade and had been banned from school trips ever since, especially the end-of-year trip to Oscorp. But that was months ago, and very few people actually cared about Peter enough to remember anything about him past the latest thirty seconds. It worked in his favor a good majority of the time.
He'd very angrily texted Ned earlier, telling him how he was going to tear out his own eyes if he had to look down and realize that he had boobs one more time and that he was fairly certain that his rising temperature indicated impending combustion, his perpetual coughing signifying miniature pre-combustions occurring within his lungs. Ned had told Peter he should probably go to sleep because it was eleven p.m. and he was pretty sure that he was delirious. Ned had told him that it was probably just a cold, that he probably just picked a bug up on the trip (Peter let out an incredulous laugh at the irony of that, but it quickly descended into a five-minute coughing fit), that he'd wake up great in the morning.
Peter told Ned that he didn't know whether he'd ever open his eyes again if he closed them. Ned told him that catching a life-threatening illness so suddenly was unlikely at best and damn near impossible at worst. Peter told him that he was right, that he'd go to sleep, that he'd wake up fine in the morning, that he was just catastrophizing. But Peter didn't know what was going on. His blood was probably experiencing direct radiation exposure, given the nature of both the experiment and the accident, and this must've been what acute radiation syndrome felt like. This must've been what it felt like to truly accept death when it came knocking at your door.
Peter had always said that when death came for him, he'd greet it with open arms; he always said that he was entirely content with the idea of death, that the thought was practically an old friend to him. The last six hours had proven that all too true, with the validity of the statement even growing with the creeping passage of time.
He'd first begun to feel the effects of his ailment at five p.m. He could smell May making lasagna for dinner in the kitchen. He could hear the football game pouring out from the television speakers as Ben watched. He'd been invited to join his uncle, but Peter had said no, too tired to even think about consulting other human beings, especially his family. Boy was he glad about that now. It had started with the thickening feeling of nausea in the back of his throat, curdling into a molasses-like substance that seeped down his throat and into the very depths of his being. It had started with his limbs beginning to feel pained and heavy, as if he'd just run a triple marathon the day before and the pain was finally hitting him.
He would've immediately climbed into bed, too tired to deal with fighting through the sickness, had he not been bundled up in his blankets already, watching an endless stream of YouTube videos on his phone like it wasn't something he did most days now, even when it made him feel so stilted and antsy sometimes. He almost never failed to watch useless videos that rotted him from the inside out instead of doing his homework or studying ahead. He didn't need it anyway—he was wildly smarter than these hundreds of identical sheep people inhabiting the prison he called school. Still, it didn't stop him from kicking off his blankets an hour or so later, when his flesh began to grow too hot for his bones.
Peter hated being smart and logical. It was one of his stupidest, most masochistic decisions he'd ever made. Ignorance was bliss, after all. The only thing more masochistic than his knowledge was what he did with it: naturally, as his fever was heating up his body, he needed to cool down, and though he had chills, he refused himself his comforter that he so desperately wanted to burrow beneath and revel in its warmth. This was also the point that he attributed his condition to the bite, and the realization set in, very suddenly and very harshly. There was a chance he wouldn't make it to sunrise if this spider bite was particularly vicious in its damage.
Of course, Peter couldn't force May and Ben out to the hospital for many reasons, but there were two main ones: one, he'd rather die than get in trouble for attending a class trip he was not meant to be on, and two, he knew that their insurance would do whatever they could not to cover the visit and treatment, whether he truly was dying or not, and he couldn't put that kind of bill on their shoulders. That was why he had to face the fact that death may be just hours away, if that, and his very first thought after that realization was the thought of peace in nonexistence. He wouldn't like heaven nor hell nor any sort of limbo or purgatory in between. He was glad that they likely didn't exist. He'd find much more peace in the fact that, after this life, he'd simply cease to exist. Without thoughts or feelings, one could experience no pain.
By eight p.m., he'd vomited twice and was consistently coughing like an elderly smoker who still did a pack a day, as they'd done for the past fifty years. May was crouched by his side and holding a cold, wet towel on his forehead to cool him as his bones shook. He refused to weep, refused to show reaction to the discomfort he felt within. Ben was sitting at the end of his bed, animatedly describing an interaction he'd had at work that day in a feeble attempt to distract Peter. Really, he just wanted him to shut up because his head was ringing with a building headache, but it was helping in more ways than it wasn't, so he begrudgingly let him go on. So maybe it wasn't as feeble as Peter wanted to think. It worked for the most part, even if it was making a singular fraction of his affliction worse.
Within the hour, Peter had kicked them out of his room due to nothing but his own self-perceived weakness, allowing him to finally release his tears in complete solitude. He couldn't keep them held back anymore—he just couldn't, not a second longer—but he couldn't let them see. They had to leave, they had to. Boys didn't cry. Real boys didn't cry. He already felt like enough of a fraud, a fake; if he really wanted to be a boy, if he wasn't always going to be a girl to the world, he had to act like it. He had to play the part to make his audience believe he was what he said he was. That was why they had to go.
In the silence of isolation, in the dimming light of the evening dragging into the first streaks of night, Peter allowed himself to cry, not out of acceptance, but out of desperation, out of instability. He didn't know what else he could do when he felt like he was constantly on the verge of throwing up whatever remained of his insides, when his bones shivered like ice even knowing he was nearing dangerous levels of heat, when it felt like every breath was knives against his throat. If he had to cry, nobody would know.
From that point forward, all he did was cry. He sobbed into his pillow to muffle the agony—not just physical, but emotional—and gripped it like it'd personally offended him because, in a way, in his befuddled mind, it had. Anything existing to witness this ruined state of him, this state that he hated more than life itself, was an enemy. It was something to be destroyed because nothing could know that he had ever existed like this at all. Maybe he texted Ned to calm himself. Maybe he texted Ned so he didn't have to be alone without anybody really knowing how he was dying. Maybe he just wanted to be with the one person who would grieve Peter, not Penny.
And that was how he fell asleep. Because he had to. He told Ned he would, and even with that not really meaning much at all, holding no real merit in the grand scheme of the universe and Peter's will, Peter thought it worth it to listen to Ned just this once. If these would be his last hours, if this would be the last time Ned ever thought of him as an "is" as opposed to a "was," then he would do him no disrespect. He'd listen to him and do what he asked of him because there was a good chance that it would be the very last thing he did at all. So he fell asleep in pain, and he fell asleep not expecting to wake up, and he fell asleep because he'd be damned if he left this world ignoring the one person he could truly rely on.
***
Dark. It was dark when Peter woke up—so dark. The moon was muddied and mottled by smog-filled clouds, and not a hint of its light shone through Peter's windows. All he got was the fleeting, weak light of a car passing by outside every so often. As his eyes flitted about the room, all he could observe was the dark outlines of his surroundings against the shadows.
Wearily, he braced himself on his elbows as he pushed to a sitting position, and at first everything seemed fine, but then his world began to twist and spin, like he'd been thrown straight into a spin cycle in the clunky washer. What little he could make out of his bedroom became a shifting, swirling mess, and yet he pushed to his feet nonetheless, gripping the wooden surface of his nightstand so hard that splinters lifted beneath his jagged nails.
He closed his eyes at first in an attempt to curb the instability growing as he forgot the difference between up and down, but it really only made things worse. He only got closer to toppling to the ground. He tried to open his eyes, realizing his terrible blunder, but he quickly found that they seemed to be weighted shut, unwilling to comply with his demands. That was when he began to grow unpleasantly airy, as if he were filling with helium, and he could no longer tell where he was until the very second he hit the ground, limp arm keeping his nose from shattering against the floorboards.
For an amount of time much longer than he cared to count, he didn't move. He refused to. He stayed stiff as a board on the ground, the bridge of his nose resting against his forearm as he waited in dreading anticipation to see whether his fall had woken Ben and May or not. He refused to even breathe, as if the barely audible noise of it would have even the slightest possibility of affecting the result, as if even twitching could shock them from their slumber, even when it became increasingly obvious that Peter's clatter hadn't.
His shoulders went weak after a while, and his chest finally touched the ground, no longer so stiff in his position. A sigh of relief washed over his body as he lay as helpless as a corpse upon the ground, calming as he was finally able to convince himself that he'd succeeded in refraining from disturbing his aunt and uncle. It was certainly concerning that his main concern was not his own health, why he'd fallen to the ground like his legs were wet strips of paper, but rather the condition of his aunt and uncle's sleep, and he was well aware of that fact, but he didn't feel like addressing it now or ever.
Gingerly, he managed to push himself to his feet and keep stable this time, ignoring the way his joints felt so loose, as if somebody had halfway undone all of his screws in favor of retrieving his footing and padding out of his bedroom and down the darkened hall. Each step he took was slow and hesitant, not wanting to trip or fall again, not wanting to risk waking anybody again. The journey, despite his apprehensive movements, was hardly thirty seconds when the hallway was so short.
He tugged on the handle of the bathroom door and lazily dragged it open, movements as sharp as they could manage to be when his state was so weakened and uncertain. The rusted faux-brass handle of the door was rough against his skin, but he didn't pay much notice, forced to pay all of his attention toward the soft, dull green light of the glowing billboard situated atop the apartment building opposite instead, the way it doused the room and offered him his first glimpse of light since he'd awoken.
The change in light levels was startling at first, and it triggered a distant throbbing in the back of his mind that he recognized from earlier on in the day—or possibly last night, he wasn't quite sure—but he was shocked into adjustment when he looked in the mirror. Warily, he stepped towards the mirror like whatever was on the other side of it was a skittish wild animal. He blinked once, then twice, and his tired brain finally remembered that he was not seeing something new. He was seeing something that always had been.
He pulled at the strap of the sports bra he was wearing, shoulders drooping in a growing sense of hopelessness as his eyes trailed over the cleavage of his chest, the cleavage he couldn't hide, couldn't remove. He didn't remember taking off his shirt, but he could only assume it was something he did in his deep, dreamless sleep brought on by his fever. He almost felt like he'd risen from the dead, but it seemed that he'd been just as active in his sleep as he was in his waking hours.
For a moment, he was utterly silent and just as still as he observed himself, unable to stop looking over his body in disdain—his chest, his waist, his hips—and the way it caught against the almost eerie light cascading through the window, the way it clung to his curves and smoothed out over his soft flesh. He looked on it all with hatred, and he let it bubble up, boiling and curdling in his blood, thickening.
All he could do was hate his body because he didn't know how to do much else with it. He couldn't fix the way his shoulder's were never quite as broad as the rest of the boys in his class, the way his hips were always going to be too much wider, his waist slimmer and higher. He couldn't fix it, so all he could do was hate it. All he could do was let that anger that it caused curdle up inside of him until he could grip the counter so hard it might've cracked, until he could punch his reflection so hard the mirror might've shattered with the hit.
The pain wasn't immediate, or, at the very least, Peter didn't process it immediately. What he did know without delay, however, was the high, distinct cracking sound as the mirror smashed against his fist, shattering his blurred dissociation alongside it. Glass scattered across the counter and floor, covering them in the sheen of sharp harm that came with all pieces of broken glass. Then, as the blood began to drip down his knuckles, he finally started to feel the sting of his torn skin.
Peter was hyper-aware of it when May and Ben climbed out of bed in a panic, and he could've sworn that he heard them far before he logically should've, but he easily blamed it on an overwhelmed mind, an imagination running just a hint too close to reality. It was easy for him to blame it on nothing when he didn't think he could trust anything he couldn't confirm with fact, when he couldn't trust his own mind.
May and Ben's footsteps clattered down the hall, sleepy and stumbling, yet the panic was evident. One of them fumbled with the handle for a few seconds before the door finally flew open and the pair rushed in, pausing at the threshold, staring at Peter. He was propped up against the tiled wall, staring at his hand and the deep red blood that dripped from the wounds on his knuckles as if it didn't belong to him.
"Oh, Penny…" May cooed, tension leaving her body as soon as she saw that Peter was, for the most part, alright.
At the name, Peter truly began to weep, unable to control it, and though neither of them knew the reason why, Ben stepped forwards from where he hovered behind May in order to place his hand on Peter's shoulder, firm and supportive. "Kiddo…" he murmured, wiping a few tears from his eyes. "What happened? You okay?"
Peter tried to formulate a response, he really did, but nothing more than broken fragments of words escaped his lips between the sobs. He collapsed against Ben's chest, wrapping his arms tightly around his uncle, and Ben lowered the pair of them to be sitting on the ground as he reciprocated, comforting Peter. "May, could you— thanks, sweetheart," he said to May as she took Peter's injured hand to bandage it up.
May and Ben had always been in such perfect sync. Peter had had years to observe the way they seemed to share every thought and feeling. Ben had clearly been trying to ask May to get the first aid kit out of the cupboard behind the very mirror Peter had just smashed, but she'd already been halfway there, traversing the glass-covered room to get to it before the thought had even managed to make its way out of Ben's mouth. Had he not been in tears, maybe he would've taken more time to appreciate it.
He refused to look back up into the sickly light filling the room. He hid his face in Ben's shoulder like it could help him hide from all that he was, and he just listened to thee way Ben whispered quick, gentle comforts to him as May bandaged him in near silence, gripping his hand like he'd disappear if she let go of him.
Maybe he would've. Maybe he did, because the very last thought that entered his head was that May and Ben were going to fret over him forever now, and then he drooped off to sleep, and this time he was all too aware that he was still alive.
***
Peter sat bolt upright in bed as a sound befell his ears, somebody much too energetic to be his aunt or uncle bounding into his room. Gripping the sheet on his bed tightly, he pressed himself into the corner of his room in defense. He was bleary, disoriented, and still utterly in a horrible mood, an odd sort of static running through the back of his mind, so he naturally wasn't all too grateful to have an unidentified intruder approaching at top speeds. All he knew was that, really, there was a good chance he might get mauled beyond recognition.
His door flew open with a violence he truly wasn't prepared for, and the suspected invader stopped in the doorframe for just a moment, chest rising and falling with each rapid breath as they stared. Peter's eyes rose to them for a moment, but he was much too high on adrenaline to actually process their identity before they leaped on him, wrapping their arms around him tightly and burying their face in his chest.
Immediately, he struggled in a panic, shoving his assailant off of him without a second thought or hesitation, movement sharp and fast, far too effortless for anything usual. They hit the ground with a hard thud and a grunt, immediately dropping limp and moaning in pain as they curled up into a tight ball on Peter's floor. That was when he finally dared to raise his eyes to the person on his floor, and he recognized him at once. "Ned?!" he exclaimed, more incredulous than truly shocked at the intrusion of his best friend. "What the heck, dude?!"
Ned was silent for a moment, save for his whines of exaggerated discomfort on the ground, before he finally decided to unfurl himself, splaying out like a starfish for a second before finally bracing himself on his arms, staring directly at Peter with a bewildered expression. "I should be saying that to you, Peter! You could hardly move me last time I checked—and you've been sick as well!"
Immediately, Peter grew stiff and frantic, hurriedly making a sort of gesture that might've signaled Ned to stay quiet had he not been moving his arms too fast to make out. "Ned! Be quiet, or May and Ben 'll hear!" he whisper-yelled, arms still moving in an aimless rush. He loved his name. He got an unmistakable rush of joy every time he heard it. But May and Ben couldn't know. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Ned looked at him strangely, tilting his head as if Peter was a sort of curiosity, an unsolvable puzzle. Then he told Peter, "Your aunt and uncle are at work."
Now it was Peter's turn to look at Ned strangely. "May and Ben don't work Sundays."
Slowly, Ned took a deep breath and pursed his lips briefly. "It's Tuesday, Peter."
His reaction wasn't immediate. Thick and viscous, awareness and realization slowly trickled into his mind. He'd gone to sleep on Saturday night. Now it was Tuesday morning. So how long had he been asleep? He woke up once in his sleep, and if he had to judge it would've been Sunday night then, which meant… Suddenly, a thought that he couldn't help but express hit him. "If it's Tuesday, why aren't you in school?"
Ned shrugged. "Your uncle got me out of it. Said I "deserved to see my ill friend." He made it sound like you were dying," he explained. His tone was amused and dismissive, as if it hadn't scared him at all. But there was something in his voice that suggested otherwise.
"He probably thought I was…" Peter couldn't help but mutter under his breath, but Ned thankfully didn't take any notice of it.
Suddenly, Ned piped up, "So… what's with the sudden muscle, dude? That stuff doesn't come out of nowhere, y'know."
Peter forced out a jerky laugh and shrugged like he didn't know how to hide his nerves. Evidently, it was the truth, too. He was far from certain, but he had a good guess, and he wasn't at all okay with the idea that the spider bite had affected him in this way. He'd slept for essentially over 48 hours straight, and now he was stronger than he ever had been before. That was a terrifying thought because, if this had changed, what else had? He didn't care to find out, but he wasn't certain that he had a choice.
"Adrenaline, probably," he jabbed at Ned. "I thought you were an intruder, y'know? Then again, maybe puberty's just working in my favor for once in its miserable existence."
Ned gave Peter a long look, almost searching. He knew that look far too well. Pity. Nothing but complete pity. Ned looked almost sad for him, as if he might, by some way, be needing of it. Peter pursed his lips, and he crossed his arms without a second to spare. He stared back at Ned, evidently annoyed. "C'mon, Ned. Don't give me that look. I'm not a kicked puppy."
Immediately, Ned backtracked without a second thought, raising his hands in surrender. His eyes widened in panic, appearing almost like saucers, and his words were going faster than his mouth and mind could move to follow. "I wasn't— I don't—"
Ned continued to ramble, trying to justify his look, trying to assure Peter that he didn't think he was helpless, and it didn't take long of it to make Peter feel guilty because Ned looked rather helpless himself. Watching him fall over himself, Peter sighed and cut in before Ned could embarrass himself any further. "Sorry. I'm sorry," he breathed, shoulders dropping limp, "I know you didn't mean it like that. It's okay. I don't even know why I said that."
It was true. Peter didn't have the faintest clue why he'd said what he said, why he accused Ned of thinking of him like that. Ned often gave him that look, and that was a thought that often crossed his mind when he did, but he'd never even dreamed of externalizing it. He always shot it down before he could even consider that—he knew Ned never ever meant it maliciously or condescendingly. He only felt appropriately bad for his best friend and his constant downhill spiral, and he appreciated the concern.
Ned smiled in weak relief in response, but he was clearly still feeling bad about Peter's reaction to his look, still rattled by having to assure his friend he didn't think of him as pathetic. Peter's guilt tightened in his chest, and now he was beating himself up for it, still trying to figure out why he'd said what he'd said. He wasn't even aware he was saying something until he already had. Sharply, he stood up and took Ned by the hand, dragging him out of the room. "C'mon. We're watching Empire Strikes Back."
Suddenly, as the pair of them hit the couch, turning on the TV, everything softened. Everything was fine. Right now, everything was fine. Watching Star Wars with Ned, everything was fine. Peter was as much of a normal boy as anybody with boobs could be, and nothing was wrong. Peter wasn't bitten by a spider. Peter definitely wasn't maybe getting super powers. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was different.
Peter doubted he could ignore it for long.