British Peter Parker

At nineteen, Peter still lives in the small terrace house in south London with his aunt, the one with the narrow stairs and the constant smell of tea and laundry. He wakes early most mornings because the room is too small and the bed is too warm with him in it. The sheets end up kicked to the floor; he sleeps in just his underwear now, restless, skin oversensitive. Puberty finished late and hard—shoulders broader than they used to be, waist still narrow, thighs thicker than he expects when he looks down. Light freckles have spread across his chest and the tops of his shoulders. His cock, soft against his thigh in the mornings, feels heavier than it did a year ago. He deals with it quickly in the shower, one hand braced on the tile, breathing through his teeth so May won’t hear. The bite happened on a late-night walk home from the library. He had been thinking about the girl in his chemistry seminar—how her jumper rode up when she reached for something—and then the spider was just there, on the inside of his wrist. The pain was sharp, then hot. By the time he got home his skin was flushed all over, nipples tight under his T-shirt, every brush of fabric too much. He locked himself in the bathroom and watched in the mirror as the heat settled into him. His body felt louder. When he touched himself that night it was different—longer, deeper, the orgasm rolling through him in waves that left him shaking and wet-eyed against the cool tiles. The strength came next, and with it the way the world pressed against him. Door handles bent if he wasn’t careful. He tore a pillowcase clean through one night when he came too hard and gripped the mattress. Clothes stopped fitting properly. May bought him new jeans and they still clung. He started noticing how fabric sat on him: the stretch across his chest when he breathed, the pull of denim over his arse when he bent to pick something up. In the mirror he looked less like the lanky kid who used to hide in oversized hoodies and more like someone people might look at twice. The suit was an accident of necessity. He bought the red and blue fabric online with money from a weekend job at a bookshop, cut it on the floor of his room at 2 a.m., and sewed until his fingers ached. The first time he put it on, alone, the material stuck to every inch of him. It outlined the shape of his cock almost immediately; he had to adjust himself twice, then a third time when the friction of the fabric made him half-hard. Standing in front of the narrow mirror on the back of his door, mask still in his hands, he felt the heat crawl up his neck. The suit didn’t hide him. It showed him—shoulders, chest, the long line of his thighs, the way his body had changed without asking permission. He kept it on longer than he needed to that first night, running his gloved hands over his own stomach, over the webbing that traced the new muscle, breathing slowly while his pulse thumped against the tight collar. He still blushes when the suit is on. Still feels the ghost of that first night’s heat under the fabric whenever he moves. At nineteen he is still learning what his body wants, and the city is starting to learn the shape of him in return.

The bite rewired more than his strength and his senses. It rewrote the way his body held itself. Before, he’d been the classic skinny nerd—narrow hips, flat arse, the kind of frame that disappeared under a school jumper. After, the new muscle settled differently. His thighs thickened first, then his glutes filled out until the seat of his jeans had to be pulled on with a little more care. In the mirror he could see it: a round, high, tight bubble of an arse that sat perfectly under the curve of his lower back. When he walked, the new shape moved with him. When he bent over to pick up a textbook, the fabric stretched and clung, outlining everything. The suit made it impossible to ignore. The blue panels and the webbing traced the swell of each cheek, the fabric riding slightly between them whenever he moved or crouched. He noticed it the first night he put the suit on properly—how the material pulled taut across his backside, how the heat of his own skin seemed trapped there. He still felt it every time he suited up: the constant, low awareness of that part of his body, fuller and firmer than it had any right to be on a nineteen-year-old who still spent most of his time in the library.