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Peter Parker was just a normal guy at first glance. Almost pathetically so. He was well built, but lanky, he was young, and he worked as a photographer of all things. But… the more you looked, the stranger - unrealer - he got.
The first thing that kicks off is how quickly he notices things. He’s keen, almost inhumanly so, and you wonder where in the hell a photographer gets his type of awareness. You’ve known photographers to see, yeah, but this… it’s more than just finding out what’s good for snapping a picture of. This Peter is a kid who’s broken through the frames of awareness. He notices things before others do, he sees , and the more you know him the uneasier you get, like you’ll look at him wrong one day and he’ll see right through you.
One day, you see him racing towards god knows where, and he leaps . He soars and bounds around, weaving around people, bouncing over fences and moving faster, faster, faster. And it grew to more than just that one day too. He runs - and fast. Whether it be that he remembered somewhere urgent to be or if he was a meager yard or two away and was bounding to greet you. His strides were long. His limbs were flexible. It was like he was some sort of acrobat. And like - though you couldn’t fathom it at the time, couldn’t imagine him of all people - the Spider-man.
You swear that Parker has a sixth sense. Though he’s normally determined and unshakable, like a blaze of anger and a living demand of justice walking through the streets, sometimes he appears almost paranoid to you. His skin gets clammy at the most inopportune moments, a bright sheen covering his face and hands, he knows just when to arrive and when to leave, his eyes will dart around at the most comfortable and public of places.
His eyes.
Over time, you notice more things. His eyes, you couldn’t dare describe it but there was this darkness, this intensity to them, that was ever so inhuman. His skin, in those moments when you shook his hand or grabbed his arm, was textured just so strangely. His teeth, when he smiled, were long and scraggly. Naturally fanged, his aunt would joke. You almost believed her.
Things began to build up in your mind, but his wrists were what sealed the deal in your mind for you.
He dresses rather modestly - everyone does in this cold - so you never really see his wrists. It’s not until he stumbles in through your door, bruised and bloody, and you wonder why here of all people when he’s got friends and that aunt of his and - you leave him on your couch because you don’t know what else to do.
You’re getting coffee when you notice something on his wrist, which hangs off of his couch. You walk up, thinking it’s some sort of scar or wound, but instead you see two small slits in his wrist. Not bleeding. Not scarred. They’re almost like gills, the way the skins fold like paper cut just so to open up.
You gently lift his wrist up and look at the slits closer. With shaking fingers, you pick at them, and they lift back .
You almost drop his arm in disgust and shock. Your stomach churning, your hands shaking, you lift back both of the - the slits? The flaps? The inside is fleshy but not raw, and there are visible puckers in the skin where it would open and close.
Webs. That Spider-man shoots webs from his wrists.
You think about the sketches of that vigilante - that monstrous, leaping, inhuman monster of a man, swinging through the streets and attacking criminal by criminal, who he turns against entirely decided on his fickle and lawless will. The newspapers flipped around a lot, from calling his presence a relief to describing him as something terrible, something spider-like - human but not quite.
You think about Peter Parker - that young, lanky boy who worked at the newspaper, a photographic journalist of all things, and how he was almost naive in how he wanted the world to become better, how angry he was at everything and his burning desire to make things better. He’s a living demand of justice, walking through the streets with all the grim but willing determination in the world.
When he wakes up, he apologizes readily, but you brush it off and feed him a meager breakfast. It’s hard to keep your cool around him, as now that you’ve realized he’s the Spider-man, every single inhuman thing he does jumps out at you. Subtle things in the way he walks, eats, and it’s as clear as day to you that this boy - this man - is different in the way that his muscles move him, his bones carry him, just so ever so slightly wrong . Human. But not quite.
You let him leave without saying anything.
It’s not until days later that you think, in a sort of epiphany, maybe that’s why he went to you.