Cosplay

“Anyone ever tell you you look a little like Spider-Man?”

Harper looked up sharply from the textbooks and notes spread before him in his booth, like the bookbag next to him had upchucked its contents all over the tongue-shaped laminated wood expanse in front of him. The waiter, a weedy, long-faced, kind of pale dude a little older than him with short dark hair and long side-burns, had paused in writing down Harper’s regular order and was eyeing him thoughtfully.

Harper wasn’t too surprised by the question. For some reason, he got it a lot—enough that he’d formed a theory. As long as he could remember, he’d wanted, more than anything in the universe, to be Spider-Man. To have his powers, his strength, the thrill of swinging through the canyons of Manhattan (or, in his case, Dallas) knowing he was more than… well, just more. He could even deal with having Spider-Man’s enemies and all his angst, which, hey, he knew from angst. He was already an orphan—that was probably what put it into his head, not that he could remember that far back. And having a blond and a redhead to choose from would be cool, though given his inclinations they wouldn’t be a Gwen and a Mary Jane exactly. He knew everything that had ever happened to Spider-Man in every medium and loved it all, even the Clone Saga and that stupid arc in Ultimate #66 where he’d switched bodies with Wolverine. And then there was that very special thing that had happened to Peter Parker in Amazing Spider-Man #100…

Anyway, Harper had decided that his lifelong craving to be Spider-Man was so intense and so cumulatively resonant in the little micro-universe of his existence that it occasionally seeped out into the awareness of those around him. Even complete strangers, like this guy.

“Looks a little like Spider-Man” was kind of nonspecific, though. He tilted his head at the waiter. “Which one?” he asked.

But the waiter’s interest had already waned. He shrugged and went back to scribbling. “I dunno. The movie one.”

Harper’s shoulders sagged. “There’s three movie ones.” And that wasn’t counting Jake Johnson, Nic Cage, Chris Pine… and it definitely wasn’t counting Nicholas Hammond. That guy could go fuck himself.

The waiter looked up and aimed his ballpoint at Harper, brows furrowed. “It was the one where he had the short, mouthy X-Girl sidekick? There was a big car crash at the beginning?” He looked at Harper expectantly.

Harper slumped against the red leatherette booth cushions behind him. He blinked at the waiter in shock. “That’s Deadpool.”

“Oh.” He shrugged again, indifferent. “Whatever. Your, uh, chickenburger deluxe’ll be right out.”

The waiter turned away and vanished into the depths of the busy diner. Harper squeezed his eyes shut and pondered how there really were two species of humans after all.

---

Harper was still thinking about what the waiter had said when he got back to his little apartment well after midnight. Flicking on the hooded little banker’s lamp on his desk, he dumped his heavy bookbag and shut the door, neglecting to turn the two deadbolts for the moment. He caught a glimpse of himself in the window behind his narrow bed, the image as good as a mirror thanks to the blackness of the night outside, and considered. He didn’t look much like Ryan Reynolds, that was for sure, and he certainly didn’t resemble the scarred and mutilated character he played, Wade Wilson. He did remind some people of Tom Holland—that must have been what the sallow waiter was thinking, he reckoned, Deadpool crossed wires aside. He would have preferred the moody handsomeness of Andrew Garfield to his sunnier, more boyish successor, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

He stripped off his red long-sleeved tee shirt, tossing over the chair, and frowned slightly at his reflection in the window-panes. Harper had done everything he could to try to look like Spider-Man from the neck down, too. He was trim and tight, but his metabolism was a little too fast to build much muscle and so far for all his efforts he’d sadly only managed to achieve the Tobey Maguire “before” look.

He glanced around his cluttered, shoe-box apartment, dark and shadowy. That, and his living space from Spider-Man 2, he mused dryly.

He dropped into his desk chair and gave his bookbag a baleful look. That Anglo-Saxon lit paper wasn’t going to go away, and it wasn’t going to write itself. He released the buckle and drew back the top flap, intending to pull out his laptop and start writing. Only… along with his MacBook and texts and all there was something in his bookbag that didn’t belong there. A thin bundle, like fabric. A red and blue fabric bundle, with black markings.

A strange premonition crawled up Harper’s spine. He reached out cautiously and touched it. Just fabric, but smooth and thin, maybe a little stretchy.

“No way,” he whispered.

He pulled it out. It was two main pieces, a top with attached mask and leggings, plus thin, soft boots and gloves. A costume. His pulse picked up. He held the top piece by the shoulders, turning it to look at it from both sides.

Spider-Man. Classic Spider-Man, from the original comics. Even the mask was the same, from the pattern of the webbing to the shape of the tear-drop, black-lined eye-covers.

He carefully lowered the top and lifted the leggings and the boots. The same.

He was getting hard.

Harper didn’t even think about it. He didn’t think about where this suit had come from, he didn’t think about how it had gotten in his bag or the intent of the person who’d made that happen. Even if he did, it didn’t matter. There wasn’t a choice involved. Harper had set the costume on his desk, jumped up and ripped off his tennis shoes and socks, then shucked his jeans before his pounding heart had thumped more than twice. He hesitated, but left on his power-blue boxer-briefs, a little bit of caution taking hold at last, though he was thinking more about possible precum from his already rigid cock staining the suit than what the suit might do to his junk.

Harper pulled on the vivid, primary blue leggings and drew them up over his briefs, frowning at the unsightly “panty-line” his briefs created. Geez, did this mean Spider-Man was always commando when he was wearing the suit? He must wear a thin jock or something at least.

The leggings felt good, though. No itching powder or anything. If this was a prank, it wasn’t that. Harper slipped on the red, black-webbed boots, then, drawing a deep breath, he pulled on the top.

It felt so amazing, he almost wept. It hugged him perfectly everywhere, like it was made for him, tailored to every dimension of his body. He checked himself out in the window-reflection and couldn’t tear his eyes away. There it was, the spider insignia, right there in the middle of his chest. His chest. He even looked subtly more muscular, like the “after” look had been achieved at last. He looked… like Spider-Man. Except for the bare face and hands. And the obvious ridge of his long erection against his hip, but that wasn’t going away anytime soon.

He drew on the gloves, which somehow felt like his own skin. He flexed his fingers. He felt strong. Strong enough to climb walls.

The gloves were missing something, though. Should he check his bag for mechanical web-spinners? No. It was all he could do right now to deal with the costume.

He grabbed the mask from where it hung at his nape and stretched it over his head, glad his wavy brown hair hadn’t gotten too long since his last trim.

He stepped forward toward his reflection in the window. The teardrop eyes built into the mask let him see everything. He was… he was…!

He was feeling something strange along the sides of his torso.

He looked down in confusion, checking his flanks on both sides. The sensation was building inside him at two different points on each side, like something was tickling the interior of his skin, working up to exploding out of him—

No. No way!

His heart thundered frantically in his chest. No, it couldn’t be—it couldn’t possibly—!

Four bulges started to erupt on Harper’s sides, two on the left and two on the right, directly below his arms at even intervals. He stared, dumbfounded, back and forth between the two sets of eruptions, arms spread wide. He almost ripped off the mask, wanting to see it with nothing in the way, but he was afraid that pulling the mask off would stop what was happening.

Then, all at once, four bare, muscley arms, exact copies of his originals above, thrust out of him with such force their fists ripped right through his costume and out into reality. The sensation was so overwhelming it elicited a loud yell from him, and it was a minute before he could focus on the new shape looking back at him from the dark window.

His chest heaved as he stared at the reflection, then at his six hands, two of them red-gloved, the rest bare. He looked back up at the reflection. He looked stronger even than a moment ago, like the upgrade to six-armed Spider-Man had come with the years of web-slinging that had built up Peter Parker’s ex-nerd physique. With it came the awareness in his mind and and every sinew that he was strong. That he was capable of more than he had been mere hours before.

He gaped at himself in the dark window glass. His life was ruined—there was no question about that. He couldn’t walk around as Harper, the mild-mannered student, with six arms. Six sweet, beautiful, wonderful arms.

He was giddy with utter happiness.

A commotion, from outside his room. “What was that screaming?” a rough voice barked. Snyder, the landlord across the hall. The doorknob jiggled—Harper hadn’t locked the door.

The door swung open. An angry, unshaven, slightly potbellied man glowered into the room. But the shadowed room was empty. The landlord grunted and pulled the door shut again with a bang. The sound of him stomping away filtered through from the hall.

Harper smiled behind his mask. The landlord hadn’t thought to look up.