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It’s dodgeball day, Peter’s personal hell on Earth.
“He looks like he wants to skin me,” he whispers to Ned as each team backs up against the opposing wall of the gym. Flash is staring at him—well, staring might not be the right word here. Glaring maybe.
Ned shrugs. “Looks kinda normal to me. He always gives you those looks when you verbally massacre him in chemistry.”
“I correct,” Peter says. “I don’t verbally massacre. And if I did, I’d feel like the king of England or something.” They had just talked about Henry VIII in history; seriously that dude had so many marital issues. “I don’t feel very kingly right now.”
The whistle blows. Kids from both teams run to the middle of the gym to grab a ball, and hell breaks loose as Peter’s senses launch into overdrive. Moving on autopilot, he bobs and weaves, sliding out of the way of any balls just in time.
Ned gets tagged out almost imminently, a ball slamming into his shoulder. To his right, MJ calmly walks up to a ball that was rolling on the ground and taps her foot against it, making Coach Wilson roll his eyes. Peter is still jumping, still dodging but never throwing, until the only people left on the two sides of the gym are him and Flash.
“Take him out, Flash!” someone shouts from the sidelines.
“You can do it, Peter!” At least Ned is in his corner here.
Flash steps a bit closer, his eyes narrow on the prize. He’s holding a ball in a way that looks like he wants to blast it through Peter’s head. “Make a move, loser.”
“You have a preference? I used to take tap as a kid and I’ve got some pretty mean breakdancing moves for a white guy.”
Flash sneers at him and chucks the ball. Peter’s hands move before he registers it, catching the ball before it makes contact with his chest.
“Out!” the gym teacher calls, and to Peter’s surprise, he’s pointing at Flash. “Parker wins.”
The bell rings and kids start to file out of the gym. Ned rushes up to him and is beaming as he gushes, “That was so cool! Your spidey senses are so cool!”
Before Peter can shush him, Flash pushes through the crowd of kids over to them. “Lucky catch, Parker. Bet you can’t do it twice.”
“Bet he can do it a thousand times,” Ned speaks before Peter can. “He’s holding back on you.”
Peter grabs his friend’s arm and hisses, “ Ned! ”
“Holding back on me?” Flash repeats, and oh, that look wasn’t good. “What, you think you can take me?”
Peter stutters, “No!” at the same time Ned nods and says, “Yes!”
“ No .” Peter frowns, now conscious of the students who have stopped to stare at the confrontation. There was a small circle forming around the three of them, boxing them in. His neck starts to feel hot. “N-no, no. I never said that.”
“Somebody punch someone!” someone who sounds suspiciously like MJ shouts from the crowd.
Flash starts forward, but Peter jumps back, stepping away from Ned and circling around. “We don’t need that. I think a lot of us have made some impressive strides in athleticism today and we can just leave it at that. Nobody wants to start a fight.”
As soon as he says the words, other kids start chanting fight, fight, fight and Peter glances around a bit helplessly for any way out of this. Where was Coach Wilson? Shouldn’t he be preventing this type of thing?
Flash gets close enough and shoves Peter’s shoulders. A few people ooh and the chanting gets louder. God, why today of all days. “C’mon Penis,” Flash taunts, “don’t hold back.”
Peter scowls and takes another step back as Flash keeps moving forward. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You think you can? ”
Yes, Peter wants desperately to say, because if I punched you without holding back it might legitimately kill you . Frustration boils in his chest and he brings his lips together to prevent the words from escaping.
“I’m leaving,” he says instead. “I’ll be late for shop class.”
He turns around. It’s not worth it. He knows it’s not worth it. Come on, Peter. You’re SpiderMan. You’re better than this.
Except maybe not. Because when a hand grabs his shoulder, he acts on instinct.
He grabs the wrist and flips the person up and around, slamming Flash on his back on the floor. The other students go quiet and Peter instantly realizes his mistake.
“Oh my god!” he cries, dropping next to Flash on the ground. “Are you okay? Holy shit I’m so , so sorry I didn’t mean—“
“PARKER!” Wilson’s voice cut across the room, breaking up the crowd of students. “THOMPSON! Principal’s office, now!”
Peter cringes but still tries to help Flash get up, repeating over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
The other boy pushes his hands away and winces as he tries to rise. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Peter bites his lip and remains kneeling as Flash eventually stands on his own. He can’t think of a good answer for that.
They both end up getting detention. Peter tries to talk his way out of it, apologizing over and over and trying desperately to think of an excuse as to why he can’t stay past school hours tonight.
“You better hope they don’t fire you,” is the only response the principal gives him when he mentions his Stark internship. “Delinquents don’t make it far in the world.”
Not if I’m a delinquent that can save your life and kick a giant robot’s ass . Peter tries not to stew in bitterness as he watches the time tick away on the clock in the detention room. So much for trying to be noble.
Once detention lets out, Peter goes straight into an alley near the school and puts on his suit. Swinging home would be faster than catching the train. It’s nearly dark outside, and May was probably worried. Peter would rather deal with her than Tony.
“You’re late,” Karen tells him once he puts on the mask.
“I know, I know. Tell Mister Stark I’ve got to raincheck.”
There is a pause for a few seconds, then, “I spoke to FRIDAY. She has relayed your message and expressed that Tony Stark is not happy. He said, and I quote, ‘no one rain checks on me, especially not baby spiders who need to learn how to properly triple axil flip without breaking their spine.’”
Peter rolls his eyes as he starts to swing. “I didn’t break my spine, it was a minor fracture. If I need to do another flip like that I know how not to land.”
“FRIDAY says those are famous last words.”
“Well she’s an AI, what does she know,” he mutters, then winces when he remembers who he’s talking to. “Er–sorry. And since when are you on speed dial with FRIDAY? Karen, do you gossip about me?”
“No,” she responds too quickly.
Peter gasps. “You’re lying! Betrayed by my own kin!”
“I am not your kin.”
“You’re my suit-kin. You touch me in places only my mom and Aunt May have.”
Karen chastises, “Peter—”
He’s so distracted that his next web shoots out wrong. He scrambles, trying to right himself as he falls, but doesn’t exactly stick the landing. There’s a sickening snap and white hot pain radiates from his knee, pulsating and sharp.
It’s only because there are a few people passing by him that he doesn’t scream . He hisses as he quickly realizes he can’t put any weight on his right leg. Shit, this hurts . At least he’s almost home. There he can lay down and let his healing do its magic.
Honestly, it isn’t the worse injury he’s ever gotten from falling.
He makes it back to Queens, limp-crawling up the side of the drainpipe. When he finally slides his window open, he goes completely still when he registers who is in his room.
Tony Stark is sitting on his bed. So is a completed Lego version of the Enterprise .
For a second, Peter forgets completely about his busted knee and takes a step toward the bed, but regrets it instantly. He grits his teeth not to make a sound and collapses into his desk chair, ripping off his mask to look at Tony while subtly cradling his knee.
“Aw, Mister Stark, did you just buy and build a Lego set without me?” Peter can’t help but hiss as he stretches out his leg. “Building it is the main part of the fun.”
“Yeah well, you snooze you lose. And I consider myself a pretty generous guy,” Tony says, and he’s talking in that sharp, snippy tone he uses when he’s annoyed. “I donate to charities, I kiss people’s ugly babies, I set up your college fund—"
Peter straightens. “Huh?”
“—But what I hate more than anything is when people waste my time,” he plows on. “I’m a busy man. I do lots of important, busy-man things. Business things , you’re too young to understand. And when we set up a time to train, I expect you to not prattle around and need a raincheck because you’re off doing some teenage rebellion.”
Peter nods once, twice, his jaw clenching as he tries not to make his pain too obvious. Tony was in Scolding Mode and Peter has learned by now that unless he acted rueful of whatever he had done, they would get nowhere. Tears form in the corners of his eyes because the pain is pulsating now. His nerves are tingling. He can feel his body trying to heal itself but shit, his knee must be dislocated. It can’t heal back right unless it's in the proper position.
“Now when I was your age I might have got in trouble, but I’m not an example you should follow in that sense.”
“Yes,” Peter says shortly, his voice higher than it should be. “I mean, no. Er—I won’t. I’m sorry. I won’t miss another practice.”
“Training,” Tony corrects. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes, observing . “What’s wrong with you?”
Peter considers lying, but the electricity in his nerves makes him wince. “My knee,” he gasps out, blinking hard. “I—I fell, and it dislocated and I think the cap shattered—"
Tony moves toward him, expression cautious with a flash of concern. “You need to go to the hospital.”
Peter shakes his head. “N-no,” he says. “I just need to…Ha-hang on…” He grips one side of his desk and uses his other to gingerly move his leg into the correct position, then jumps up and slams all of his weight down on it. Peter cries out but the relief is immediate, his bones and tissue automatically knitting themselves back together. He sucks in a breath and glances up at Tony, whose face is stricken with horror.
“Oh my god,” Tony cries, flapping his hands around. “Don’t do that! Don’t ever do that! And don’t ever do it in front of me!”
“I’m fine,” Peter assures him, smiling a little to prove it. “I just had to knock it back into place is all. Look, really Mister Stark, I’m okay.”
Tony looks green. “Christ, that’s—that’s—eeegghhhh, that’s gonna stick with me. You could have let a doctor do that instead of body slamming it back into place. Probably would have been safer, too.”
Peter gives a little shrug. “I can always fix myself up. I don’t need a doctor.”
“How often do you get hurt? You know what, close your mouth, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. I know you’ve got enhanced healing and everything, but you’re a growing boy with growing bones, and a broken kneecap is a big nono. Go to a hospital next time.”
Peter tries to deflect it again with a shrug. “It’s nothing, really. Hospitals aren’t for me.” He stands gingerly and tests his weight on his knee. Gesturing to the door, he says, “Is—is May here? Do you want anything to drink? I think she has goulash left over from last night and I know she was making a pot roast—”
“Deflecting!” Tony announces, pointing an accusing finger at Peter. He has his phone out and is tapping away on the screen, apparently not needing to look up to call Peter out on his bullshit. “Don’t think I can’t see it, I’m the master of deflecting, kiddo. You don’t deflect the master. Next time you get hurt like a dislocation or a broken bone, you’re getting professional medical attention. I’m ordering you. That’s an order.”
Peter bites down on his lip. Tony couldn’t force him to go to the hospital, right? That wasn’t something he could do. Unless it is, and if that's the case Peter is in trouble. He rubs his hands together nervously and vaguely thinks he should get out of his sweaty suit. “Tha—that’s really not necessary—”
“Afraid of the big bad doctors in white? I know one that can turn green.”
“It’s not…It’s just…” Peter flounders for a moment, tugging at his bangs. “Hospitals are…” There’s a lump in his throat, and he’s got to force his words out. He lifts his arms up and down once, flapping them lamely at his sides. “Expensive.”
Tony snorts, still tapping. “ Somebody’s gotta pay for your insubordinate recklessness.”
He wasn’t getting it. Peter was going to have to come out and say it. “Mister Stark,” he says quietly, “May and I…we, um…we can’t afford that.”
Three things happen in succession:
- Tony’s fingers freeze on his phone.
- His expression gets intense behind his glasses.
- Peter opens his mouth.
“It’s just May has to work extra shifts sometimes because I keep losing my backpack and that’s not even my fault because I keep webbing it pretty well but I know it’s those assholes on seventy-first who are messing with me but I haven’t actually caught them yet—"
“Kid.”
“—have to keep my scholarships up because it makes paying for school easier but next year I’ll have to start looking at colleges and I’ll probably have to get a job and a real internship—not that a fake internship with you is bad, Mister Stark, but I can’t ask May to support me because she’s stressed enough just buying groceries for the two of us—"
“ Kid .”
“—fine, honest! I’m used to getting hurt, even before I had the healing ability I would fall over and ram into stuff and get bruises. I don’t need to put any more pressure on her or on us because I know she works so hard to take care of me and herself and—"
“Parker!” Tony barks, loud enough that it causes Peter to jump. “Breathe, kid. You’re giving me anxiety just looking at you. God, you aged me ten years just now. The only things that should be running through your head are pretty girls and Twinkies.”
Peter shuffles his feet on the carpet. “I don’t like Twinkies.” Thinking about MJ, on the other hand…
Tony rolls his eyes. “Fine. Think about the snack of your choice. Leave messing with doctor bills to the adults.”
Peter frowns at him for a second before the realization of what Tony was implying hits him. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, Mister Stark I couldn’t—that’s too much, you—you don’t have to—”
“You better learn when to shut up,” Tony warns seriously, even if there's soft amusement in his eyes. He absentmindedly starts fiddling with his phone again. “It’ll get you in trouble one day.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter blurts, because he can’t seem to make himself stop. “But really— really , Mister Stark, I don’t need you to pay for anything—you’ve done so much already and May and I do okay on our own—”
He feels a little jolt in the wiring of the suit, and light spreads through the veins before it fades. He looks down at himself before turning to Tony, who looks incredibly pleased with himself.
“New protocol,” Tony informs him smoothly. “Next time the suit’s AI—"
“Karen,” Peter corrects quietly, though he’s not sure if Tony hears him or not.
“—detects an injury of a certain severity, it calls me, and I take you to the Avengers’ private physician. The goal here is to not get hurt. Use that as your new safety vendetta, or whatever.”
Peter opens his mouth again—half of him wants to protest, the other half wants to geek out because Tony Stark just wrote a new protocol on his phone . Is the suit wireless? Can Peter write coding on his phone and upload it like that?
“Now I’m gonna be gone for a while,” Tony waves his hand around in the air. “Chasing a certain ne'er-do-well in an undisclosed location in Africa—”
Peter perks up. “You’re going to Wakanda? Are you hunting the Winter Soldier?”
“Legally I can neither confirm nor deny any of that.”
“You're totally hunting the Winter Solider. Hey can I come? I’m great at tracking. Once I tracked this guy from the Bronx all the way to Jersey City.”
Tony snorts, ignoring that altogether. “The point here is that I’ll be far—but not too far if you need me.”
Peter swallows. He doesn’t want Tony leaving his trip early to come after him if he gets hurt. That would be embarrassing—and, not to mention, make him a burden on the man’s shoulders. And Peter refuses for that to be the case ever again.
“So!” Tony claps his hands together loud enough to make Peter jump. “What were you saying about pot roast?”
“…So now, I need you to do this.” Peter bites his lip and adds, “Please.”
Ned frowns and shoots him a wary look. “I don’t know. Don’t you remember how pissed he was the first time we messed with the suit?”
“Yeah, but that was different. We’re not removing it, we’re just rewriting one part. If he looks to check he’ll still see it’s there and won’t notice anything is different unless he digs into the code!”
He knows Ned still isn’t buying it. He leans back on Peter’s bedframe with his legs spread out in front of him on the floor, absentmindedly examining the Enterprise model Tony constructed in his lap. “What is the point? Are you trying to prove something?”
“Not exactly.” Peter runs his hands through his hair as he paces. “It’s just…He kept saying how busy he is and how he doesn’t want me to get hurt, but I get hurt a lot.” That’s literally why Tony has been training him in actual hand-to-hand combat. “But I can’t always prevent it, you know? I don’t want him to think I’m weak, but I don’t want him to constantly have to look after me, either. I heal just fine by myself. I don’t need some stupid protocol in the suit forcing me to call him whenever I sprain my ankle.”
He bites his lip, rocking back on his heels. “And asking him to pay for my hospital bills is…weird.”
“He’s Tony Stark . Isn’t he a bazillionaire?”
Peter shakes his head. He thinks back to his conversation last night and how strange it felt to complain about something as trivial as finances to someone as stupidly rich as Tony. He cringes and steps a little faster. “Yeah, but it’s—y’know, awkward to ask for money. I don’t want him thinking we’re like, super poor. Plus, I think he would try to stop me from patrolling if he knew how many times I get concussions.”
He rounds on his friend with a smile. “This is we just gotta tweak it a little.”
Ned raises an eyebrow, and Peter drops down next to him on the floor, his eyes bright with excitement. “Think about it! Tony can still have a protocol in the suit that lets me contact him when I need help, but what if I decide when that was? We could make it so Karen has to ask permission first. That way, it doesn’t happen all the time and he doesn’t get annoyed by me, and I can still have the direct line if I need it!”
“Rewriting a protocol meant to keep you safe kinda sounds a bit sketchy, though. I don’t know how good of an idea this is.”
“It’s a great idea. A perfect project for my guy in the chair!” He pouts and clasps his hands together in a pleading gesture for extra measure.
Ned stares at him. He looks down at the Enterprise , then back at Peter. “One day, calling me the guy in the chair isn’t going to work to get me to do your dirty work,” he tells him, but sets the Lego starship aside and reaches for his laptop. Peter whoops and jumps up, grabbing the suit off his desk chair.
“What do you want to call it?”
Peter drops down crossed-legged on the floor next to Ned and starts easing the suit’s seams apart to get to the wiring. “Call what?”
“The protocol,” Ned replies. “Mister Stark always makes funny names for them. It’s your first line of code for the suit, you should make up a cool name, too.”
Peter thinks about it for a moment. “Spidey Says?”
Ned makes a face. “Too much alliteration.”
“I got it!” Peter snaps his fingers. “Mother may I!” At Ned’s blank look, he goes on, “You know, that game we used to play in third grade? Like, mother, may I take three steps forward ?”
“The only thing I remember about the third grade is how Emma Rodriguez gave everyone chocolate for Valentine's Day except me,” Ned mutters, starting to type. “Not a good year for me.”
“Mother may I,” Peter repeats, nodding. Yeah, this is good. What Tony doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
He turns to his best friend and bumps their shoulders together as Ned types. “Don’t worry, man. I’ll buy you all the heart-shaped candy you want this year.”
“Don’t joke about that,” Ned says. “You know I take my sugary snacking very seriously.”
Peter snickers. “I know.”
Peter’s ears perk up when he hears a siren going off from what sounds like at least ten blocks away, and his boring school night suddenly gets a lot more interesting.
The outside of the bank is ripped into a gaping hole by the time Peter gets there. Swinging inside, he lands easily in a crouch. The man in front of him has his back turned, quickly stuffing cash into the bags he was holding. But he wasn’t just holding them from his hands. He had metal tentacles sticking out of his back. Peter tilts his head and counts at least four.
“I can get why you’d want more than two arms,” Peter says. The man whirls around in surprise. “Multitasking, and all. But four? Isn’t that a little excessive?”
Instead of verbally responding, the man growls and one of his metal arms shoots forward. Peter leaps up, landing nimbly on top of the appendage. Another one comes barreling toward him out of the corner of his eye and he flips back onto the floor before it can touch him.
He shoots out a web to trap another one of the tentacles on the floor. It squirms like a wild animal. “How do you buy shirts?” He narrowly dodges another swipe of metal and slings another web out. “Do you have to special order them off Etsy or something?”
His web misses and a tentacle clocks him in the chest, throwing him backward. “Oow.”
“Maybe if you stopped your jabbering, you’d be able to see that you’re clearly outmatched,” the man quips. The tentacle that Peter had webbed to the floor breaks free of the webbing and goes shooting toward him.
“On your left,” Karen supplies helpfully. Peter jumps up onto the ceiling and two of the incoming tentacles crash into each other. He pushes off and lunges at the guy, but another tentacle grabs him around the waist and slams him hard enough into the wall that it crumbles around him.
Peter groans as the world swims. It takes longer than it should for him to get back on his feet, and by the time he does, the man is long gone.
“Ugh.” He rubs a hand to the back of his head and leans on a now exposed steel support of the building. “Karen, who was that guy?”
There’s a beat before she responds. “I didn’t find facial recognition in any of SHEILD’s database.”
“He’s new? Well, that’s great. He sure knows how to use those metal thingys, that’s for sure.” The room sways around him and he can’t help but groan. “My head is killing me.”
“That’s because you have sustained a grade two concussion,” she informs him. “Peter, Mother May I Protocol. May I call Tony Stark?”
Peter’s heart jumps. “And let him know I let a bad guy with massive tentacles get away? No way! I’m fine, just a little dizzy.”
“I believe you are downplaying your condition.”
Peter smiles a little. “Maybe. But hey, at least I know that code Ned wrote is working!” He starts to head out of the bank, his legs feeling more like jelly with every step.
“I hardly think that is what you should be concerned about.”
“Gotta take joy in the little things, Karen.”
“And then, he just picks me up and threw me,” Peter finishes lamely. “My head hurt so bad I couldn’t go after him.”
Ned levels him with a look. “Dude. No one is blaming you for not catching the bad guy if you were injured.”
Frustration blooms in Peter’s chest. “But it wasn’t that bad,” he argues, his voice rising. They were in a corner of the library in study hall, huddled behind a stack of books and pretending to do their calculus homework. Well, Ned is actually doing his calculus. Peter keeps going over the scenario of the attack in his head, wishing desperately he had gotten up quicker, had webbed up the man while he had the chance. “I could have kept going. If I was stronger—”
Ned kicks him under the table. Peter glances up to see a librarian sternly eyeing them as she passed by. Peter pretends to write something down on the paper in front of him until she leaves.
Peter leans over and whispers, “Your guy in the chair magic totally worked, by the way. It would have been way more embarrassing if Tony had to divert his trip to Wakanda to come to get me because I got a stupid concussion.”
Ned turns to look at him and frowns. “Are you afraid of him or something?”
Peter swallows as his mouth is suddenly dry. He brushes it off with a scoff. “Afraid of him? N-no, I’m not afraid of him.” Afraid of disappointing him . He’s too busy to keep looking after me all the time. “I just don’t want him thinking I’m weak.”
Before his friend can respond, Flash walks by their table and hisses, “You best be studying, losers. I’m going to whip your asses in lightning rounds today.”
Peter raises an eyebrow. “Tell me how to spell lightning and maybe I’ll believe you.”
“Hey.” MJ suddenly appears at Peter’s shoulder. “Save it, idiots. I can’t get banned from the place we practice decathlon, and I’m ordering you two not to get banned, either.”
“You can’t order me around,” Flash protests.
Her eyebrow twitches. “I am your god from the hours of three p.m. to five p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
Flash sticks out his tongue at her. She flips him off as he walks away.
“What a jerk,” Ned mutters. “You’d think he’d have the decency to respect library policy to leave your jerkiness outside and respect the sanctity of the written word.”
MJ looks at him. “Name one story you’ve read in the past month that isn’t a Star Wars fanfic.”
Ned’s face gets a little sheepish. “Does the novelization of The Last Jedi count?”
“You dweeb.”
“Nerfherder.”
Peter snickers and MJ rolls her eyes. “It’s so sad that I know what that is. I should have better friends.”
A week and a half later, the man with the tentacles attacked again, this time during Peter’s commute home. After the Vulture fight, he started taking the bus routes home instead of the subway for obvious reasons.
Being underground gave him chills.
He quickly leaps off at the next stop, changes into his suit, and swings into action. The man is…well, it can’t be running exactly since he’s using his tentacles to move. Are those things remote-controlled or something?
“Fancy seeing you again,” Peter calls casually, swinging up next to him. “Is this how you normally get around? Makes sense. I bet those things are a hassle to get through TSA.”
The man glances at him out of the corner of his eye and his speed slows as one of the tentacles swings and whacks Peter in the chest. “You’re the little spider that took down Vulture? You hardly seem like a threat to me.”
As Peter gets slammed to the ground, he still manages to keep his grip on the metal arm.
“Ouch, quick judgment. We haven’t even had our introductions yet.” Peter feels himself start to sweat as he holds onto the thrashing limb. He digs his feet into the concrete of the sidewalk and pulls , effectively keeping the man in place. “Hi, I’m Spider-Man.” He lifts the tentacle with a grunt and swings it around, throwing it and the man attached to it across the street. “Nice to meet you!”
The guy leaves behind a trail of jewelry on the street. Peter catches a man out of the corner of his eye reaching for a diamond necklace on the ground.
“Buddy, did you not just see me slam that guy into a building for theft?” He shoots a web to stop the guy’s sticky fingers.
A scream tears through the air and Peter’s skin breaks out into goosebumps. He whirls around, managing to fling a few pedestrians out of the way as a car door comes barreling through the air. It crashes into the brick wall, flinging stone and smoke everywhere.
“Oof.” Peter rises from where he’s been knocked on the sidewalk. “When I told May I wanted a car for my birthday, this wasn’t what I had in mind.” He rubs at his eyes, trying to ignore the pounding at his temples and get them to focus. He can’t have a sensory overload, not now!
“Peter,” Karen prompts. “Should I call Stephen Strange? His assistance would be beneficial in this situation.”
He shakes his head. “Nah, I got it.” He watches as the tentacle man starts to clamber away down the streets. “He’s not getting away this time.” Getting a running start, Peter swings up onto a lamp post and starts the chase. “What d’you think of his name being Tentacle Man?”
Karen makes a soft deliberation noise. “You are historically known to be more creative than that.”
Peter nearly laughs. He shoots another web out. “ Arm- y Guy? Get it? Because he has too many arms and wears green?”
If an automated intelligence could sigh, Karen would do so. “Perhaps you should focus on keeping up. If you take a right down this alley you can cut him off at the next intersection.”
God, Karen is so damn smart . He’s kind of in love with her.
He does as he’s told, veering right and hopping up onto a building, still running after the sound of whirring metal and chaos. He should be getting extra credit in gym for this. All this running sucks.
He sprints across the roof, jumps down, and lands on the guy’s back. The man stumbles and swears and tries to shake him off, but Peter’s excellent at pretending he’s a koala.
“Get off me!” the man snaps, thrashing. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, child.”
“I really don’t,” Peter agrees. “It would be a lot easier if you tell me your name, or else I’ll keep thinking of ones for you.”
A tentacle swipes at Peter, forcing him to let go of the nameless villain in order to dodge it. “You’re beginning to test my patience.”
“I bring out the best in most people.”
Another tentacle wraps around his legs and tosses him to the side. Peter yelps as he crashes into a newsstand. Ow .
He scrambles to his feet just in time to see the man climb away, crashing down into a subway entrance. Peter makes to follow but skids to a stop in front of the entrance.
His blood runs cold at the sight of the gaping entrance.
The subway is a manmade cave of concrete and stone. He thinks of how fast it could fall, how easily it could crush him and all the people inside, and how if it did he couldn’t save all of them, there was no way—
“Peter,” Karen says, snapping him out of it. “Your opponent is escaping and your heart rate is elevated. Do you feel alright?”
It takes a second, but Peter eventually says, “Y-yeah, I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Then, he hears a few screams that sounded from underground. Anxiety or not, he’s Spider-Man. He needs to stop this guy.
Trying to clear his head, he runs the stairs into the station, leaping over the turntables and heading for the source of the noise. He catches sight of a metal tentacle disappearing down one of the tracks. One of his webs snags it, but it’s like trying to hold on to a bucking bronco. It pulls him through the crowd and onto the tracks, whipping around to try to get him off.
“How many times do I have to squash you?”
“Wouldn’t hurt to give another try. Hey,” Peter says, punching away a tentacle that tries to stab him in the side. “I thought of a better name for you. What about Mister Octopus?”
“That’s doctor to you.” The man scowls and a tentacle wraps around Peter’s leg, hoisting him upside-down. “Is there an off button on your mouth?”
“Nope!” He slaps a web on Doctor Octopus’ face. The man lets out a muffled cry and claws at the goo, the tentacle dropping Peter in the process. “Seems to work fine for you, though.”
Doctor Octopus rips the webbing off and Peter aims to shoot another one, but one of the tentacles slams him to the ground, his head making contact with a rail with a clang .
A wave of nausea rises up in him as little birdies and stars dance in Peter’s vision. Above him, Doctor Octopus is occupied with something else, messing with something on the wall. “As much as I would love to banter with an ignorant arachnid,” he says, “you have a train to catch.”
“Peter, Mother May I Protocol,” Karen chimes. “You there is a hairline fracture on the base of your skull. May I call Tony Stark?”
“No,” he grounds out. He doesn’t need Tony, he just needs to get up. Dazedly, he tries, lifting his head in time to see the man climb away down the opposite section of the tracks, disappearing into the darkness.
“Lame pun!” Peter wheezes after him. “Doesn’t even make sense.” He sucks in a few breaths, hissing at a sharp pain in his lungs. Maybe he broke a rib too?
“Peter,” Karen says, “Doctor Octopus has disabled the braking system in the tracks. The next railcar has a ninety-eight percent of crashing into the end of the track.”
Peter leaps to his feet, his heart racing. “ What?! Wha-what do I do?”
“ Mother May I Protocol,” Karen responds. “May I call Tony Stark? Steven Strange, perhaps?”
There’s a rumbling in the darkness, signaling a beast approaching. Peter can make out two headlights that are steadily becoming brighter and brighter. His panic spikes as he repeats, “Karen, what do I do? ”
“It would be wise to call—”
“Just tell me how to stop it!” He sprints toward the train, the clacking from the darkness getting louder and louder.
“A webbed netting would slow the trajectory by forty percent,” Karen says, “but it won’t stop the car completely. A stabilizing force needs to take the impact.”
“Impact, huh?” He flings out a few web grenades on opposite walls. He goes over the net a few more times to build up a few layers. Part of him doesn’t even want to ask, but he does anyway. “Is that gonna hurt?”
“Most likely.”
He tries not to groan and leaps down onto the tracks. The subway is much, much closer now and he sprints as fast as he can to get a little distance between him and the oncoming car. It’s in view now, all blinding lights and blaring horns, just seconds away from barreling into the webs.
Peter rights himself in the center of the tracks and his mouth goes dry. Here it comes.
The subway blasts through the webbing but the train keeps coming, the lights now blinding. Peter closes his eyes and throws up his arms, bracing for impact.
Getting hit by a subway feels way worse than getting hit by literally anything else because it’s a subway and it’s heavy . The sound of his scream gets swallowed up by the noise of the train’s screeching horn, so loud it rattles his teeth inside his skull. He forces himself not to think—just jams his feet into the ground and pushes back as hard as he can.
He feels sick when something in his arm snaps , but Peter grits his teeth and keeps his grip tight. The cars slow to a stop just as the back of his foot brushes up against the wall.
Exhausted, he slumps against the front of the car. “I—I think I get the pun now.”
“ Mother May I Protocol,” Karen says. In the soup of Peter’s consciousness, it sounds like her voice is floating somewhere in the distance far away. “You have broken your arms and sustained serious damage to most of the soft tissue in your joints. May I call Tony Stark?”
“Muh…maybe,” Peter mutters, feeling the black around his vision get dangerously close. “N…no wait, d-don’t. ‘M okay.”
Karen is not satisfied with this. “I suggest you receive immediate medical attention.”
He slumps down to the ground as he hears people start to shout and cause commotion from inside the car. His head is swimming, but at least no one got hurt. “H-hey, is there a way you can use that shocky thing on me from my taser web? I…I think I’m having a stroke.”
Karen doesn’t respond, but bolts of electricity suddenly jolt through the suit. It’s not too harsh—just enough to force the black out of his vision. Still shaking, Peter uses the edge of the car to stand. “Th-thanks, Karen. C…Can you call Ned, too? I need him to reset my arm when I get home.”
“Yes, Peter.”
“You stopped a subway!” is Ned’s cry of excitement when Peter limps into his apartment. Ugh, if he already knoww about why he called, then that means it’s gone viral.
“Don’t remind me,” Peter moans, stumbling over to the couch and collapsing. His suit deflates off him and god, he doesn’t even want to look at all the bruises he has.
“It’s such a cool video,” Ned prattles on, already moving to get Peter’s first aid kit. “Like, you gotta see it. Well, I guess you did see it because you were there and lived it, but you looked so cool the way you just jumped in front of it and pushed it back. So cool.”
Despite the pain and delirium, Peter smiles dreamily. “Thanks, man.”
Ned comes back over to the couch, aid kit in hand. “Did you break your shoulder?”
“I broke everything,” Peter admits, cringing. “It’ll be gone in an hour or two— shit, shit, ow! ”
Ned releases his hold on Peter’s left wrist. “Your hand’s not supposed to bend that way.”
Peter groans and swallows down another wave of nausea. At least he did the right thing. He saved all those people, stopped the bad guy…Suddenly, his eyes widen. “Damn it! I let Doctor Octopus get away!”
“Doctor Octopus?” Ned repeats. His eyes go wide in excitement. “Does he have tentacles?”
Peter nods. “Four giant metal ones.”
“I thought octopi had eight arms.”
“Technically, they have six arms and two legs.”
“So he’s missing a few appendages. Not really an octopus.”
“Ned,” Peter huffs, “I didn’t count how many arms and legs he has before I named him. He’s a supervillain! He doesn’t have to be politically correct about his limbs!”
He flexes the hand Ned adjusted. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore, now just a bit of a feeling like pins and needles as the muscles and bones knit back together. He grabs some gauze and some medical tape and starts to wrap up his other wrist.
“Well, then you should shorten it,” Ned suggests. “Call him Doc Ock instead of Doctor Octopus. That was you’re not technically referring to him as the incorrect cephalopod name, but it still sounds bad ass.”
Peter considers this. “That does sound cooler.”
Ned gives him finger guns and grins. “Guy in the chair.”
The pain in his joints remains for a few days. He thought his healing would take care of it, but apparently, his body hated stopping a subway just as much as he did. Every ache is a taunting reminder of his failure. He kept letting his pain get the better of him, and the bad guy got away because of it.
Hell, Peter was there when the Avengers defeated all those aliens in Manhattan and did any of them stay down after a harsh blow? No. Doc Ock hasn’t reappeared—he could be long gone by now—and it’s all Peter’s fault. Even just thinking about it makes him clench his teeth until his jaw aches.
But overhearing a table of girls at lunch one day coo about how strong Spider-Man is to be able to stop a subway was pretty nice.
Peter preens as he passes their table, not noticing Flash’s foot sticking out until he’s already greeting the floor face-first. His tray and food go flying and he lands hard on his left elbow. Pain rockets through his nerves from his last injuries and he bites on his lip hard, refusing to let out the noise welling up in his throat.
He rolls over and glares up at Flash. “What the hell, man?”
Flash is staring him down with equal fervor. “Better watch where you’re going, Parker.”
A thousand words come to Peter’s tongue— you’re a dick—your hair greased like that makes you look like a wannabe Jonas Brother—I could literally kick you in the ass so hard you’d end up another borough —but he can’t. Can’t fight back, can’t be Spider-Man. He can only bite the inside of his cheek, blood boiling by the time he gets to his table.
Luckily, the universe provides him an outage for his rage. That Friday after school, Peter’s Twitter feed starts blowing up. Life footage of a man dressed in green and four extra metal arms comes barreling through his screen. And it wasn’t too far from here, either.
Determination settles in Peter’s chest as he pushes through the crowd of recently released students in the schoolyard. This is his chance.
Just as he’s around the block, he hears a voice call out, “Parker!”
Peter’s stomach sinks. He doesn’t have time to deal with Flash, not now . He keeps his head down and keeps walking. The voice calls out his name again and Peter tries to ignore it, but he’s aware of a presence just behind him seconds before a rough hand lands on his shoulder.
“Parker, I’m talking to you.”
The hand yanks him around. Damn it, he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be moved. Instead, he faces Flash and bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying something that’ll probably get him punched.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Going home, obviously.” He glances over his shoulder, then back down at his phone. The live feed is still going. Anxiety trills in his stomach. He doesn’t have time for this! “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I don’t mean right now , dumbass,” Flash snaps, rolling his eyes. “I mean in decathlon.”
This throws Peter for a loop. They didn’t have practice today, did they? MJ would be pissed at him if he skips but maybe he can make it up to her later—
“Your girlfriend benched me for the rest of the season.”
Peter’s eyes snap up. “What?”
Flash sneers at him. “Oh, don’t act like you didn’t tell her to. You probably whined to her and she thought it was so pathetic she had to do something about it.”
“I-I didn’t say anything to her.”
This seems to infuriate Flash more. “Then why did she say I didn’t have what it takes to be a team player? I’m the goddamn best on the team and I got benched because of you, Penis.”
“Look man, she’s not my girlfriend. I didn’t tell her to do anything,” Peter insists, anxiously glancing down at the stream again. It looks like Doc Ock is even closer now. “I really gotta run, couldn’t we talk about this later?”
“This isn’t a one-way conversation—fucking look at me!”
The phone gets slapped out of his hand and it clatters to the ground. Peter cries out in outrage, but Flash jumps in front of him to block him from getting it back.
Peter opens his mouth but stops when he catches movement over Flash’s shoulder. A metal tentacle whips up over the top of the building on the other block.
“I don’t have time for this,” he declares.
He shoulders around Flash, forgetting about his phone, and takes off sprinting. He ducks into an alley and throws off his backpack and clothes, not caring where they fall. He’s on a mission this time. He manages to get on the roof and sprint after the man just as he rounds the next building.
“I got you this time,” he whispers, getting close and shooting off a web. It directly hits one of the tentacle's claws, trapping it against the side of a building. Doc Ock whips his head around and Peter gives a little wave before he shoots a web grenade, which wraps another two tentacles.
“What do I have to do to squash a spider?” the man groans.
“I dunno, probably use some Raid. A big newspaper would also work.”
Something Doc Ock’s face darkens with wicked intent. “I have a better idea.”
And then, before his spider-sense can even respond, one tentacle lunges at him. It’s faster than a viper, sharp as a knife, and it hits Peter with the force of a truck. It knocks him back into a building alley but then it keeps pushing, half of it detaching itself and drilling forward past flesh and muscle.
His throat feels raw as he screams.
Doc Ock hurdles away, and Peter automatically wants to follow but—oh Jesus, he can’t move. This thing is so deeply embedded in his side that it’s keeping him suspended and he’s going to be sick—
“Peter,” Karen’s voice filters through the panic. “ Mother May I Protocol. May I call Tony Stark?”
But Peter can’t think—the screaming fire in his nerves makes it hard to do anything else but breathe. On his next breath, he hears rattling that isn’t natural. His hands flail, trying to grab a hold of the tentacle to pull on but they were shaking too much, and they’re wet, so wet , and he feels nauseated along with the pain because the metal is sticking out of him and it hurthurthurt —
“Peter,” Karen prompts. “ Mother May I . You are in critical condition.” She sounds distant, like she’s underwater. Maybe he’s underwater. It feels like he’s drowning…is there water in his lungs? Is it raining? “P…..tell….call…ark.”
And suddenly, everything feels so cold. Peter can only stutter out half of Karen’s name before he loses consciousness.
If there’s one thing that Tony hates more than press conferences, it’s foreign press conferences. He misses the days when he had people for that.
Walking through the doors of the empty penthouse, he lets himself feel the exhaustion he’s been pushing off. He’s finally home and Christ he just wants to sleep.
FRIDAY interrupts his daydream—which is close to a nightdream, at this point—with a, “Boss, I’m concerned.”
“Hi Concered,” Tony mutters, flopping onto the couch, “I’m Tony. Nice to meet you.”
If AI’s could sigh, FRIDAY certainly did. “There’s a message I think you should hear. It’s from the spider suit automated intelligence.”
Tony rubs his eyes. What had the kid named her again? “You mean Karen?”
“Karen,” FRIDAY affirms, sounding a little miffed.
“Play nice. I don’t think she sounds hotter than you.”
FRIDAY seems to ignore that part. “She is quite distressed.”
Tony almost makes a shitty pun about losing an AI beauty contest, but what FRIDAY said finally seems to register. “Is something wrong with the suit?”
There’s a bit of a silence. “The exterior of Peter Parker’s suit has three tears.”
So the kid has been busy while he's gone. Nothing unexpected there. Three scratches certainly weren’t going to kill the kid. “What’s got Karen riled up?”
“Peter Parker is in critical condition.”
Tony sits up, instantly alert. “ What? ”
FRIDAY repeats, “Peter Parker is in critical condition.”
Panic floods his system and he’s on his feet in an instant. “Got that the first time. Where is he?” The suit starts to assemble on him, and he tries to will the technology to go faster.
There is another silence. “I’m getting two different readings on his location.” Christ, the kid didn’t get ripped in half, did he? “His mobile device and his suit are not in the same area. I will program a flight pattern to the suit.”
The suit finally stitches together. Holy shit, that too way too long. The second it’s on he blasts off through the balcony, pushing thrusters as fast as they can go.
Heart racing, Tony says, “Put me on with the kid.”
“I can’t.”
“FRIDAY—”
“The suit is unable to create or accept calls from your personal line without Peter’s verbal consent.”
Tony nearly stops midflight. “ What? ”
“It’s blocked,” FRIDAY says simply, like he was stupid. “There is a code—”
“It’s my tech!” Tony snaps, instantly aware of what must have happened. Peter blocked him. That little shit. “Scramble the code and force it though!”
“Parker, you better by dead or dying because I am going to kick your ass so hard you’ll be back in Cap’s millennia!” He weaves around another building, ears straining for a response but hearing nothing. His heart rams faster against his ribs. He’s about to yell to Peter again when he hears a different noise. A faint gurgling.
Tony’s stomach drops. “Peter?”
No answer. He pushes his thrusters a little faster, cold sweat breaking out onto his forehead. Silence is not good. Silence is never good, because the kid never shuts up.
The coordinates FRIDAY gives him lead him down an alley. At first, he doesn’t see anything. But then, he does.
What looks like a human-sized puppet is hanging on the wall. But then Tony realizes that the puppet is Peter , slumped down and unconscious. The kid is suspended on what looks like a staff, speared through his left side, keeping him in place on the wall.
Tony forgets how to breathe, his blood rushing in his ears. He swoops a bit closer. The kid’s eyes are closed and the suit is red in so many places it’s not supposed to be. Ice spreads through his veins and he wants to close his eyes and wipe the memory of this clean.
He hovers there for a second, frozen.
“Vitals,” he hears himself croak.
“Life signs fluctuating, Boss,” FRIDAY speaks promptly. “Punctuated lung, extreme internal bleeding. His immune system is working to heal itself, but the presence of the metal is preventing his body from coming out of shock.”
Peter’s body is working itself into a frenzy. He couldn’t heal if he’s stuck like this. Tony looks up and down the wall, trying to figure out how deep the…whatever the hell metal this is in the foundation. It looks like a claw? Whatever, doesn’t matter. Your kid is bleeding out, Stark. Focus.
“How do I get him out?”
“The metal is drilled into the brick. I would recommend cutting the appendage and leaving it intact when transporting until medical can remove it.”
“You want me to keep that thing in him?” Tony nearly squawks.
“It is currently acting as a tourniquet to prevent tissue from getting further damaged.”
Tony swallows against the bile that rises up but forces himself to push down his horror. This isn’t about him, this is about keeping Peter alive. “Call emergency SHEILD medical and get them ready for a critical patient.”
“Already done, Boss.”
His gauntlets shake as they laser through the metal. Now no longer stuck, Tony catches Peter before he can fall, wincing slightly at the way the kid’s head lolls around. He doesn’t stir at all from the change in position, no shift in his face or breathing pattern. Shit. No time to waste, Tony blasts back to the penthouse as fast as the laws of physics will allow.
“Hold on,” he breathes, not sure if he was talking to himself or the kid. “Hold on, hold on.”
He’s got the building in view when FRIDAY chirps, “Doctor Cho and medical ready.”
Tony doesn’t slow when he finally makes it, slamming down onto the balcony in a landing hard enough to crack the foundation of the floor. A team of people in scrubs rushes out to greet him.
“Bed,” one of the doctors says, but Tony is already moving, dropping Peter onto his mattress as he tries to control his breathing. Less than a heartbeat later, the medical team swarms, all of them speaking quickly to one another.
“Irregular pulse.”
“Sounds like a pierced lung.”
“Get me a breathing tube and the defibrillator.”
“How do we get this thing off?”
One of the nurses starts wrestling with the suit, and Tony tries to find his voice to tell them how to take it off, but he can’t do anything but stand there and stare in dumb shock. One of them finally presses in the right spot, and the suit and mask get torn off a second later. Peter’s chest is black and purple, the flesh shredded near his side.
Tony nearly vomits. He lifts up the faceplate to get a breath of air, to try to ground himself, to find something that wasn’t discolored on this teenager’s body to focus on. His skin looks so gray, like there wasn’t any life left in him at all.
The medical team is still moving around him seamlessly like he’s not even there.
“Where’s my defibrillator?”
“Start cleaning around the wound.”
Dimly he thinks he should move out of their way, but then something incredible happens. Peter’s eyes flicker open—slivers of brown that immediately lock on him. Tony’s voice catches in his throat, feeling pressured to say something, anything—to scold the kid, to assure him he’ll be alright and stay alive and it’s fine , everything will be fine —
“Ben?”
Peter’s voice sounds incredibly vulnerable, barely more than a whisper, but it still cuts through Tony like a knife. He stumbles a step back.
“Prepare for removal on my mark. Ready—now!”
When two of the doctors dig in and rip the metal out of Peter’s side, he doesn’t scream. He makes a pathetic choked noise and his entire body seizes, his eyes rolling back until they’re just white. Some of the nurses hold down his shoulders, but then he starts to jerk like something out of the old Exercism movies, and Tony can’t take it.
Feeling rushes back to his feet as he flees the room, stumbling out of his armor and barely making it to the toilet before he vomits. The walls are too close, the room is fading to black, just like Peter’s chest, Jesus , he’s just a child—
Tony heaves again. He eventually empties his stomach of everything that’s in it for the past week and then some. Resting his head in his hands, he takes a few shuddering breaths, forcing himself to focus. Peter is here , he’s safe, and he’s breathing. He’s tough. An Avenger. He could make it.
And if Tony feels like he was lying to himself, even just a little bit, he thinks he deserves it right now. Peter mistaking him for his dead uncle is something that needs to be thrown in the preverbal coffin and get buried in his subconscious forever.
Yanking himself up by the counter, he sucks in another breath before heading to the kitchen. His hands shake as he pours himself a glass of water. He can still hear the sounds of the medical team in his room, so he grabs a tablet and pulls up the code for the AI system in Peter’s suit.
“Hello, Tony.”
“Hi,” he croaks, throat still raw. “Karen, right?”
“Correct.”
“Okay Karen,” Tony says, licking his lips. He takes another swing of water. His throat is still burning, like his eyes, like his skin. “You wanna tell me why you couldn’t call me before Peter got himself into serious mortal peril when I specifically made a code for you to inform me when he needed medical attention? Or why you didn’t call me when he was bleeding out? Or fuck, how about why you blocked my comms?”
“I was following protocol.”
Tony scowls, his grip tightening on the glass. “What protocol ?”
Karen’s answer is smooth and breezy. “The Mother May I Protocol. Peter instated it so I would not call you when he deemed it unnecessary.”
Tony’s eyes narrow. “Like when he gets hurt and he doesn’t want me knowing about it?”
“Precisely.”
That little shit. Fury suddenly overrides the panic and concern, because god damn it , this is exactly the kind of thing Peter’s not supposed to be messing with. And if this is the effects of one villain, who knows what else the kid could have gotten into while he was away.
He takes the glass and the tablet and moves over to the couch, settling there before snapping, “Bring up every recording of when the Mother May I Protocol was in use.”
Peter is swinging down the street from streetlight to streetlight, chattering a mile a minute. “I can’t believe she asked me out! Do you think she’s liked me this whole time? Maybe the whole mysterious and aloof thing is just a gimmick and she’s been trying to get me to notice her! Is that something girls do, Karen?”
“I don’t know,” Karen admits. “I’m not a girl.”
“You sound like a girl,” Peter points out innocently, shooting another web. “Do suit people have genders?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know a lot of things.”
“If MJ asked you to a movie, then it is statistically likely that she holds romantic feelings for you,” Karen says helpfully.
Peter brightens. “How likely?”
“Eighty-seven percent.”
The kid shoots a web at a pole and loses concentration as he blurts, “ Eighty-seven— ” He gets cut off as he swings up too far and slams into the top of the streetlight, hitting him squarely in the chest. He quickly wraps his arms around the light to stay aloft, but wheezes as the breath is verbally knocked out of him.
“You have fractured your sternum,” Karen chirps. “ Mother May I Protocol. May I call Tony Stark?”
“No,” Peter grits out, trying to regain his grip on the streetlight but ultimately failing. He falls to the sidewalk with a little yip.
“Karen, Karen, Karen,” Peter sing-songs. He’s somewhere dark, lying on the ground and looking up at the sky above. His voice echoes like he’s somewhere with a lot of metal. “Karen, do you know why I named you Karen?”
Karen is no-nonsense as she says, “Peter, you have sustained a grade three concussion and fractured ribs from your fall. Mother May I Protocol. May I call Tony Stark?”
“May I tell you why I named you Karen?” Peter replies, sounding a bit dopey.
Karen seems to hesitate, then gives in. “If you will not give me permission to call, it would be wise for you to stay conscious.”
“I named you Karen because of Spongebob! See, there’s this old cartoon about a sea sponge and there’s this evil guy who has a computer wife named Karen. Only I think you’re a lot nicer than that electronic lady.” He pauses, then the camera angle shifts as he tilts his head. “Hey, how come I’m in a dumpster?”
The room is he in is very, very bright. The camera view moves around wildly as Peter moves his head. He’s upside down, wrapped in chains hanging from the ceiling of what looks like an old warehouse. There’s a fire underneath him, licking its way steadily up the walls.
Peter’s breath is rapid, and he squirms in the chains, sending him swinging back and forth near the flames like a pendulum. “Karen,” he says, his voice cracking, “wh-what do I do?”
“ Mother May I Protocol,” she responds. “May I call Tony Stark?”
“No!” Peter cries frantically, shaking his head. “I-I can get out of this myself. Ri-right?”
“Your chances of survival are thirteen percent.”
The kid sounds tiny as he whimpers, “Not—not even fifteen?”
“ Mother May I ,” Karen insists.
Peter makes a frustrated noise, then squirms more. He’s able to get one of his arms mostly out of the chains and starts trying to untangle himself.
Karen comments, “Flames reaching critical heat. If you fall, you will have severe third-degree burns.”
His voice is still shaking, but he sounds a little stronger now that he’s starting to get himself out of the trap. “You have a lovely bedside manner, you know that? It’s almost like someone programmed sarcasm into you!”
“I do not have the ability to display sarcasm.” She pauses, then, “You can free your legs if you swing up and blast the binding chain with the lasers in instant kill mode.”
Peter stops struggling for a second. “I have lasers?! ”
This kid is fucking ridiculous. Tony doesn’t even know how to even begin to deal with this. “Pause.” He pinches his nose and heaves a breath in frustration. “Karen, who hacked your system?”
“Ned Leeds,” she answers. “Peter’s friend.”
Tony knows who Ned is, or has seen the same kid with Peter a vague number of times who he can assume is Ned or Ned-like. If Tony had to guess, Ned’s the one with Peter’s phone, and he’s probably worried sick.
Right. He should call somebody, May probably. And he will, if Peter stabilized. ( When , Tony catches himself, shuddering. When Peter stabilized.)
He stands and takes the tablet with him, heading back over to the kitchen. He can’t handle this sober. “Dial Peter’s phone.”
The phone rings and rings, and no one picks up. Tony tries again, and this time a voice that is distinctly teenage answers. “Penis Parker’s phone. Please leave a message after the fart noise.”
The person on the other side blows a raspberry and Tony bristles. “Is this Ned?”
“It’s your mom,” the kid sneers. “She says hi from my bedroom.”
“Hope you fucking enjoy the chlamydia, kid.”
He instantly hangs up. He didn’t have enough patience right now to deal with fucking teenagers . He runs his hands through his hair and is about to call May when Karen chips, “Ned voice recognition negative.”
“That wasn’t Ned.” Tony’s nearly relieved until another thought creeps up on him. If that wasn’t Ned, who the hell has Peter’s phone?
He drops his face into his hands and groans. “Don’t tell me this kid has a bully.”
“Flash Thompson,” Karen supplies helpfully. “Peter has often complained about nicknames and minor injuries. Voice recorded and added to database.”
Exhaustion weighs down on his bones. An Avenger with a bully—a snoody teenager unfortunately named Flash who gave Peter nicknames and noogies . Christ, Tony’s too old for this.
He should have been there. Peter should have called for help. There are thousands of ways that this could have been prevented, all running through Tony’s head at lightspeed. He pours himself a glass of whiskey, knocks it back. It burns all the way down, and probably will hurt worse when he throws it up later.
He pours a second glass and wanders back into the living room. He wants to go to the bedroom to check on Peter, but the image of finding the kid shish kabobbed rears its ugly head. Panic washes over him in thundering waves, because he thought he was doing the right thing by giving Peter his suit back, trying to make him an Avenger, but then the kid goes and shuts him out and takes on somebody with a vendetta and a giant metal tentacle—
Tony pauses. If there’s one thing he can do, it’s finding out who Peter was trying to fight, and tear them the fuck apart.
Everything hurts. Everything .
It takes a few tries, but Peter eventually manages to open his eyes. It takes even longer for them to focus. He’s in a bedroom that’s not his own, in a bed that’s not his, and he’s wrapped up in about fifteen different wires and beeping medical machines. His head feels like it’s being split open. He tries to swallow, but there is a tube down his throat.
He flexes his fingers and toes, groaning when his nerves tingle with painful pins and needles. Taking a bit heavier of a breath, Peter goes to sit up.
“Move an inch and I swear on everything that is holy I will bring the Hulkbuster in here and sit it on you.”
With effort, Peter turns his head to see the bleary form of Tony Stark, sitting next to the bed in a chair that looked like it belonged in a dining room rather than a bedroom. He looks ruffled and exhausted. Dimly, Peter remembers something and tries to speak, but the tube prevents his words from being more than a muffled noise.
Tony’s eyes widen a bit in understanding. Peter closes his eyes and opens them again sometime later to find a nurse working to pull the tube out of his throat, and wow, that ’s not a pleasant experience. Once it’s gone, he coughs and feels like his entire chest rips apart.
Eventually, he sucks in enough of a breath to rasp, “How was Wakanda?” God, he sounded like a smoker, only if a smoker had smoked tar instead of nicotine.
“How was Wakan— how was Wakanda? ” Tony repeats. Peter can’t tell if he’s angry or astonished, and he’s honestly not sure which is worse. “Kid, you get served up on a platter by mad scientist Otto Octavius—who has just been apprehended, by the way, no thanks to your little stunt—and you ask me how my day was?”
Peter croaks, “Doc Ock.”
Tony blinks. He’s not wearing any glasses and his eyes are bright spots in the haze of Peter’s vision. “What?”
“Doc Ock,” he repeats a little louder. Shit, that hurt his throat. “His name. Doctor Octopus, ‘cause he’s got tentacles.” Tony just keeps staring, his mouth hanging open. Peter feels his face heat and looks away. “’S stupid.”
Then, he keeps glancing around. “Am I in your room? ”
“Peter,” Tony says, his voice holding underlying frustration that wasn’t very underlying. “Pete. Buddy. You’re missing the point. You went out and did a not neighborhood-friendly thing and you got seriously hurt and you didn’t call me .”
“Didn’t ne-need to.” He coughs again and winces. “C-Can I get some water?”
But Tony speaks over him, his voice so loud Peter’s sure it rattles the window frames. “You didn’t need to? You almost died . You got turned into a human shish kabob and your healing couldn’t keep up and you were nearly gone. My medical team had to bring you back from the brink and you think you didn’t need to call for help? ”
Peter shakes his head, a difficult feat with the way his temples are screaming at him. He snaps his eyes shut and tries to will the pain away.
“You think you can just rewire the suit whenever you want and make up protocols to keep me out?” Tony’s voice now sounds panicked and shrill, oh nonono , don’t be angry, anything but angry. “I put—I put the call line in for a reason, you—You can’t go out and play Spidey Says when Karen tries to call for backup.”
Peter’s head lolls to the side. He barely can move his mouth but manages to force out one word. “Busy.”
There’s a beat.
Then Tony asks quietly, dangerously , “What?”
Peter opens his eyes. Tony is sitting rim-rod straight on the edge of the chair, which seems to be much closer to the bed than it was before. “You’re busy.”
“I’m busy,” Tony echoes, now sounding a bit hollow. Peter nods once, but it's really more of a lolling.
“You told me not t’ get hurt,” he garbles through a mouth full of cotton balls, “or else you’d have t’ come ‘n take care of me. But you’re busy and important and I get hurt a lot , so I c’n handle it.”
Something raw flashes on Tony’s face. When he speaks next, it’s quieter, almost to himself. “Have I made you think I’m too busy for you?”
“You’re T’ny Stark,” Peter reminds him earnestly, because Tony looks confused and Peter only wants to help. “You prolly knew that, though.” He frowns. “‘M I on drugs right now? I think I c’n see another dimension. Wait—can I see Thor’s space castle from here? There’s s’methin’ shiny…”
Tony releases a sharp breath and rubs his fingers over his eyes.
Suddenly, heat springs behind Peter’s eyes and he jerks his arm off the bed. He manages to grip Tony’s wrist, tightening there to keep himself grounded. He looks at Tony with wide eyes and immediately starts to apologize.
“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry M’ster Stark, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry.”
Tony’s still looking at him with that expression , like he’s hurt and scared , and Peter can’t think of how he did it but he knows it’s his fault, knows he fucked up bad this time, but he can’t remember what he did or why it made Tony so upset. “Kid—”
“Sorry,” he repeats, and it’s like a waterfall, spilling out of his mouth in a monumental torrent. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—“
“Peter,” Tony says, now looking distressed. “Peter, breathe.”
“’M sorry, ‘m sorry, sorry—" And suddenly he loses his breath and can’t seem to find it. He feels himself gasping and choking and thrashing and can hear Tony shouting and then people are touching him and pressing on his chest and he’s screaming and it hurts, it hurts so much—
And Peter blacks out.
The next time Peter wakes up, everything is a little clearer. Tony isn’t sitting in the chair anymore, but is instead standing at the side of the bed—his own bed—with a stern expression on his face. He’s wearing different clothes and has on a pair of yellow-tinted glasses that make his eyes look darker.
“You with me this time, kid?” he prompts. “You gonna stay awake?”
Peter nods and opens his mouth to speak, but Tony holds up a finger. “Not a word. Not a single syllable.”
Shutting his mouth, Peter trains his eyes down at his hands on the blankets. He hears Tony sigh above him.
“Right, okay. So. Third time’s the charm. Let’s see if you’ll stay lucid long enough this time for me to get into this. I think we all know I’m not the best at pseudo-parenting, and no matter what I tell you to do you always do the opposite, but at least I can attempt to be supportive when I can. Try to understand—look at me, Parker.”
“I know you’re mad.” Peter keeps his gaze stubbornly down on the sheets.
“I’m not mad,” Tony assures him calmly. “I left mad behind a long time ago. I’m fucking furious, you little twerp. And if there’s one thing that you can do right now to get me to be less furious is to look at me .”
Peter swallows against his dry throat and slowly turns his eyes upward. Tony takes off his glasses and crouches down next to the bed so he’s at eye level, leaving no escape.
“Try to wrap your head around this. I care about you.” He pauses, then mutters to himself, “Christ, I said it, where’s Rhodey when I need to rub it in.” He clears his throat and turns back to Peter. “I know you get hurt a lot. I know you go after bad guys that you shouldn’t be going after, and I know you’re gonna do it whether I tell you to or not. But if you doubt for even a second that I’m gonna let you slide by with hiding nightly high-grade concussions and stopping fucking subways without asking for my help because you think I’m too busy to deal with you, you’ve got another thing coming. Multiple things, actually, because Aunty Hot Pants isn’t happy with you either.”
Peter knows he should feel slightly betrayed because Tony called May, but he guesses he kind of deserves it. “Mister Stark—”
Tony holds up a hand. “Not done.”
“But—”
“Ah!” Tony points the glasses threateningly at him. “What did I say about speaking words?” Peter closes his mouth. “Good choice. Now, I get that you want to be tough, want to be the biggest, baddest superhero around and take all your frustrations of your changing body out on the villains of the night—”
Peter feels the tips of his ears flush. “Wha—”
“—BUT you need to understand every superhero has weaknesses. Even the Avengers. Especially the Avengers. We get hurt and have to take breaks and have secret hideouts for families because our jobs put their lives in mortal danger. You can’t live in a comic book world where pain and injury don’t exist.”
Tony suddenly looks exhausted, the dark rims under his eyes clearer now that he’s so close. Peter has a dim flash of him looking like this before, but the memory is too foggy to place.
“I’m not trying to baby you,” Tony continues. “The world is a horrible, cruel place. You’ve found that out on your own. I can’t protect you from everything and I don’t think either of us really want that. But taking off a safety protocol that’s meant to assist you when you are in serious or critical condition is fucking irresponsible , Peter.”
Tony pauses and looks him over. Peter still has his lips pursed together so hard they’re white. “Now you may speak.”
“I wasn’t trying to be irresponsible,” Peter says quickly. “Honest Mister Stark, I didn’t want you to have to look after me because I know you’ve got stuff going on with the Rogue Avengers and finding Captain America and you got engaged and—"
“Take a breath, kid.”
“—you don’t have to worry about me. I can handle villains on my own and I heal well enough and yeah, it hurts sometimes but I always end up alright. I don’t want you to think I’m weak or feel like you’re…” Peter trails off before ducking his head and finishing softly, “stuck with me.”
Tony mutters a curse and glances around the room in exasperation once before moving to sit on the edge of the bed. He holds up a finger as he ticks off each point. “Alright, one: the Rogue Avengers shouldn’t even be on your radar. Yes, I know they are because I brought you to Berlin and maybe that was selfish of me, but whatever, we’re past that. Just—don’t worry about Steve. He’s not gonna come barreling out of the shadows to question your patriotic morals any time soon. Two: enhanced healing doesn’t make you indestructible. You’re physically stressing your body all the time and it’s not healthy. And three: do you think you’d be sitting in my bed right now if I thought I was stuck with you? I care about you, you stupid twerp. It's a very unfortunate fact considering my cardiac history.”
Peter doesn’t answer, emotion rising in his chest. Heat pools behind his eyes and he wipes at them furiously, trying to maintain what little he had left of his dignity.
Tony lets out a little breath and fiddles with his glasses. “How about this. I take off the Mother May I Protocol and give you the freedom to call me whenever you deem it necessary. But—and here’s the kicker—you call me when you need help, when you almost black out, when you shatter bone or go up against a guy with metal appendages. Capiche?”
“ Capisco ,” Peter replies.
“I’m not—" He stops, hesitating, then starts again. “I’m not always going to be there for you. I can’t. But I sure as hell am going to do everything I can to help you until that day comes. You’re part of my team. It’s my job to look after you.”
Evidently pleased with his wording, Tony nods and looks more solemn than before. “Now that that’s over, I have one more thing to ask you. It’s vitally important, and if you lie to me I swear to god I will end you right here, right now Parker.”
Peter swallows thickly. “Of course. Anything.”
“Who’s MJ?”
Peter’s mouth drops open and he feels heat rush to his cheeks. Tony smirks and presses, “Is she your girlfriend?”
“ No! ” Peter cries quickly, flushing more when his voice goes up an octave. “Sh-she’s nobody. I-I mean, she’s—she’s my friend, no-not my girlfriend .”
Tony waggles his eyebrows. “Is she cute?”
Peter flails his hands around wildly. “No—yes—I mean, I-I don’t look at her like that —"
Tony is snickering at this point, not letting up. “Do you loooove her?”
His entire face feels like it’s on fire. Peter covers his face with his hands and shrinks back as far as he can into the cushions, wanting nothing more than to curl up and die. “Shut up .”
“She can be your spider-lady. You can have disgustingly athletic arachnid children.”
There’s the sound of a slamming door, and Peter doesn’t need his enhanced hearing to know when his aunt is here. Her voice is distinct enough as it is, not to mention when she’s screaming profanities in her mother language.
Tony steps back from the bed. “Sounds like the calvary is here. I’ll see you when she’s done cleaning up the shrapnel.”
Peter peeks his eyes through his hands and mutters, “It’s always worse when it’s in Italian.”
The billionaire snorts and slides on his glasses. “Don’t I know it.” Tony’s smirk softens into something a little more genuine. “You don’t always need to take care of everybody, you know. You’re allowed to accept help too.”
The words ring truer than Peter is willing to admit. “I know.” And maybe he’ll get over the hurdle of his own burdens one day so he doesn’t need this reminder. But for now, it’s good to know that he has Tony in his corner.