For as long as you could remember, you'd been able to feel other people's pain.
Your first real memory of it was at age six, when your dad moved out. You'd watched his car drive away from your bedroom window before going downstairs to find your mom sitting at the kitchen table, her hands covering her face.
You'd reached up to touch her arm and suddenly felt an intense wave of pain wash over you. Not the usual pain that came when you fell and scraped your knee: you felt this one in your chest, like something inside you was breaking in two.
Without even really understanding what you were doing, you squeezed her arm, allowing the sadness to leave her and travel to you. She hadn't seemed to notice it, but after a moment she'd straightened up and looked at you. Somehow, she seemed a little happier.
"We're going to be okay, honey," she'd said, hugging you.
That was the first time you'd taken someone else's pain.
As far as you knew, taking the pain didn't really affect you. If anything it made you stronger. It was something you liked to do anyway. Some people had so much pain inside of them it was unfathomable: old people, little kids, friends of yours. You wanted to help, to make it better.
One average Monday morning, you walked into your chemistry lab expecting to see your usual lab partner waiting for you.
Instead, Peter Parker was sitting there.
"Um, hey," you said slowly.
He looked up from where he was scribbling in a notebook. "Oh, hi," he said, nearly falling over in his haste to get up. "My lab partner's absent and I guess yours is too, so we're supposed to work together. If that's okay."
You didn't know him too well, only that he was super smart and on the decathlon team, so you shrugged. He'd probably do most of the work, leading to an easy A.
"Yeah, no problem." "So I think for this one, we just have to mix . . ." You zoned out, studying him. He pretty much flew under the radar as far as you knew, but you remembered him being absent for weird periods of time here and there for reasons no one could figure out.
"Do you wanna pass me that?" he asked, pointing to a beaker on your side of the desk. You nodded and handed it to him, your fingers accidentally brushing.
The second you touched Peter, you nearly doubled over.
The pain was like a cinderblock on your chest, heavy and dense and making it hard to breathe. You were surprised to feel that it was a mixture of sorts-grief, fear, anxiety, guilt. You'd never felt pain that was so complex but also still managed to be so raw. It was indescribable how much it hurt.
You stared up at Peter, who showed no signs of any of that on his face. You couldn't believe that this kid, this normal, smart, quiet kid, was bearing all of that every single day.
He was looking back at you, slightly confused. "You okay?" he asked.
You blinked and withdrew your hand, exhaling. "Yeah," you nodded. "Sorry. What were you saying?"
As Peter continued explaining the experiment to you, you wondered what happened to him that made him this way. Who hurt him? Who would want to hurt him?
"Got it?" Peter said, yanking you from your thoughts.
"Yeah," you said absently. "Sounds good."
Like you'd predicted, Peter was happy to do the majority of the work anyway. All you had to do was hand him this or stir that and nod along to what he was saying and he'd be satisfied.
