I.

No matter how long he practiced limiting his meals, Peter never could quite get used to the gnawing hunger or the bone-deep weariness day in and day out.

This was the right thing to do, though. Aunt May didn't deserve to suffer over his excessive appetite, not when it meant she'd have to take on more hours at work and go without simple luxuries to come up with the kind of budget he probably needed. As it was, they were living almost paycheck to paycheck. It was bad enough that May couldn't even hide it anymore… but it wasn't like he would keep it from her if he was actually starving or anything. Sure, he was ravenous most of the time he was awake, but he was handling his responsibilities and life in general perfectly well, so it wasn't affecting him. He was doing just peachy.

He only knew he had a higher basal metabolism in the first place because money hadn't been an issue when his appetite suddenly spiked after the bite. Uncle Ben hadn't been pulling in a high salary by any stretch, but it had been plenty to support the family with a good amount left over every month. Their grocery bill had gone up then, but his aunt and uncle didn't complain even once, stressing that a growing teen needed to eat plenty and occasionally reminding him that it was nothing to be ashamed of.

They'd struggled more after Uncle Ben… wasn't around anymore. The savings account could only last so long, and when they were nearly through that buffer zone, his aunt had had to pull herself together through her own grief and depression to pick up a second part-time job and return from her sick leave at her old job. That was when he'd started his "diet" of sorts. He couldn't take seeing May struggle through sixty- and seventy-hour work weeks to net less money than they'd ever had, and he had to do what he could to minimize his impact. He even took on odd jobs after school and over some weekends to buy extra meals on his own dime, but the kinds of jobs that would hire a fourteen-year-old were few and far between and weren't the most pleasant to say the least. He'd gotten used to getting by on three normal-sized meals most days and treated any exception as the amazing opportunity it was, a chance to finally feel sated for a few hours.

It helped that he had decathlon practice after school three days a week and their fundraising projects covered plenty of snacks during training. Ned would often laugh at the veritable mountain of food Peter could cram on their tiny paper plates and let him go at it otherwise uninterrupted. He made sure to clear his schedule to help out with every fundraiser—even though they officially only had to do one or two each month—to make up for all he took.

He'd gotten used to scheduling his patrols based on his food access. It was a simple process, really. Spider-Manning was a breeze when he could eat to his heart's content, so he'd log as many hours as he could on those days. The day immediately after wasn't as easy, but it was still doable, and he found he could go three or four hours as long as it wasn't too intensive and he squeezed in a break every half hour or so. After two or more days without eating so much, it wasn't worth patrolling. The lethargy weighed him down and made him inattentive, and he could only handle an hour at most before he was desperate for a nap or an extra meal that May shouldn't have to pay for. It put a damper on his Spider-Man efficiency, but he just used those days as productive Peter Parker days by focusing on less intense activities like homework and practicing for decathlon. The struggle was there, but he was keeping it together… until he wasn't.

The first time he acknowledged that maybe, just maybe something was wrong, he woke up with a pounding headache and a stiff neck… and he was not in his bed. That was the easiest conclusion to come to. He was laying on his stomach somewhere cold and hard, so maybe he managed to roll off his bed and onto the floor. He'd had some rough nightmares for a while after Ben's death during which he'd thrashed around enough to toss his sheets off the bed, but never himself before. The weird part was that they'd gotten a lot better by now, waking him maybe once a month.

Something still niggled at his senses… It was too cold. May never kept the thermostat this low; it may be pricey, but she always said it was worth the extra cost to stay at a comfortable seventy degrees in their own home. He paused to think about it—though his tired mind protested thinking about much of anything—and thought he must have forgotten to close his window. His theory was solidified by the sounds of the cars and people rushing by. Too loud, loud enough to prickle at his sensitive hearing and not muted by the thin glass as they should be. But something still wasn't right… He could smell fresh pizza even though he'd been nine the last time they'd lived close to any pizza places, and… no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember settling into bed to go to sleep. He couldn't even remember getting home after his unplanned patrol earlier. He'd meant to go home immediately after school, but he'd run into a mugging on the way home and couldn't just walk on by. He remembered handling that, not feeling up to doing much more, and changing back into his street clothes and then… nothing.

Things weren't adding up, though he felt like he should be drawing a conclusion roughly now. He braced his hands to push himself off the floor but shuddered with an undignified yelp when his left palm slapped into a shallow puddle of something. His eyes shot open while he yanked his hand back and shook off the mystery liquid, no longer content to block out his senses, and he realized this was not his bedroom. It was a narrow dark alley he didn't recognize.

He allowed himself a solid few seconds of confusion before he realized with a shiver that he didn't know what time it was and it was dark. He concentrated on picking through scrambled memories and mentally walking through the past day until he gathered what had happened.

He'd been walking home from school with Ned. They hadn't had decathlon today, and it had been four days since he'd had the chance to eat very much, but he felt relatively okay, maybe just a little worse than he should when they'd walked a couple blocks.

He distinctly remembered actually drooling when they walked by a Chinese restaurant. Ned had noticed and laughed. He didn't have extra cash on him, and he'd snapped at Ned without meaning to when he suggested dropping in, so he'd had to apologize and lie about May planning some special dinner with a new recipe that she didn't want him to spoil so Ned would drop the idea. Ned always forgave easily, and the conversation had drifted back to assignments and anecdotes about the separate parts of their school days as they trudged on. Peter had waved goodbye with a wide smile when they split off at their usual point.

Talking to Ned had kept him distracted enough to not pay too much attention to how he felt, but he was a little dizzy by the time he was on his own. That was a bit concerning out of the blue, but it wasn't like it never happened before. It was a once or twice a day occurrence recently much to his frustration, but he was used to it. He'd even successfully hidden the feeling in gym class a couple days, so it couldn't be anything major.

He'd been pushing through it because he was only a few minutes away from home and he could have some time to sit back and relax there… except it hadn't been a routine trip straight home. He'd overheard a mugging in progress and swooped in after wrestling his way into the suit. It hadn't taken much effort, but the dizziness was unquestionably worse after he'd finished webbing the guy up, leaving a note for the police, and swapping his clothes again in another alley. He'd really thought he could make it home from there, but now he remembered the dizziness suddenly kicking up another notch and making him come to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk. He'd had to stumble into yet another alley after a few pedestrians shoved him out of their way. He must have actually passed out after that, but—crap! May was definitely home by now and wondering where he was. He felt crappy enough. He didn't need to deal with her suspicions that something was going on with him today too. It was getting harder and harder to hide his extracurricular activities from her even now that he was five months into it.

After spending a mystery amount of time unconscious on the pavement plus another few minutes awake and confused while piecing together the afternoon, it was a struggle to push himself until he was sitting against a wall. His vision swam at the exertion, but focusing on taking deep breaths while he fished through his backpack for his phone fixed the problem and he could see again. He tapped at the power button, but the screen stubbornly remained black, which made perfect sense. Parker luck strikes again.

Should he go home from here? He probably wouldn't admit it to anyone, but he was still a little shaken, and it was hard to make decisions for himself at the moment. He'd never passed out as Peter Parker before. He knew the feeling from a couple patrols where he took more hits than he could handle as Spider-Man, but this was… different. He was just as alone when he was Spider-Man, but this didn't feel the same somehow. It was more… personal, more unsettling. Actually, thinking about it, anything could've happened while he was out cold. He was lucky no one with the wrong intentions had stumbled upon him.

It was probably too late to check in with Happy, and he'd barely patrolled anyway. Plus, the guy hadn't responded to even one of his texts or voicemails in the month since they'd met. Why would it be different tonight, especially for a non-Spider-Man problem? It made more sense just to go home. He still had to cram a night's worth of homework into however much time he had left before he needed to be in bed. Although… this was like sleeping, right? He could probably swing staying up an extra hour or two tonight. He had to fight off another bout of dizziness when he stood for the first time in… half an hour? Half a night? …but soon enough he was on his way home.

He made a beeline from the front door to the fridge without even tossing his backpack aside and grabbed the first thing he saw, practically inhaling the cold leftover spaghetti. Logically speaking, it wasn't good; the originally overcooked noodles had become semi-hard overnight, and the sauce was more reminiscent of a hard tomato crust on the pasta rather than the paste it used to be. To Peter's starvation-addled brain, it was the best meal he'd ever had. He actually moaned in delight, then froze at the sound of a giggle.

He relaxed with a grin when his sluggish brain processed that it was just Aunt May. It must be after seven if she was home. A furtive glance at the microwave confirmed that he'd managed to stay out until nearly half past eight. May finally brought her giggling under control, but the good mood clung to the apartment and made the room seem lighter.

"Someone's hungry!"

"Yeah," he admitted with a laugh of his own. He found himself bringing a hand up to push his hair out of his eyes. "I forgot to grab a snack before I went on a walk earlier."

May would only worry if she knew the truth, and it was easier to lie when he was the first to bring up the topic. Still, he couldn't completely shake off the guilt that burned in his stomach the rest of the night.