an interesting birthday.
peter let out a loud whoop as he swung through the air, wind whistling in his ears through his mask.
he grunted with effort as he gripped the string of web and released, flipping down and landing on to a small building by an alley.
peter grinned, the fruity smells wafting from the little booth.
he grabbed a couple of dollars out of his suit pocket and slapped them down on the counter, laughing when he saw the shock and awe on the booth guy's face.
"mango smoothie, please!" he exclaimed brightly, and the ginger man nodded, his glasses nearly falling off his face.
"o-of course, sir" he stammered, and peter smirked inside his mask.
"hey hey, I ain't no sir" peter chided good-naturedly.
the man nodded again wildly, busy making peter his smoothie.
he slid it across the counter, though not without an admiring glance and a "I appreciate what you do for our city"
peter chuckled, tugging his mask up so he could take a sip of the drink. "thanks man" he said, wiping his mouth.
he saluted and stretched out an arm, shooting a web and swinging away.
he continued to swing through the blocks of clustered buildings one-handed, slurping from his drink.
peter decided he was allowed a small splurge, hence the drink, for his birthday.
he was sixteen. to be honest, he felt a lot older. the small instance of his entire family dying tended to have that effect.
he missed the old days when he would bake a crappy cake with aunt may, and watch whatever he wanted on their laptop together, usually a star wars movie or something with sci-fi, cuddled up on the couch with cheap party hats.
but that was before may died. he was alone now.
peter was managing on his own. he had his shitty home, home being a shabby little space in a small abandoned warehouse.
he earned money taking photos for a local newspaper. it wasn't the best job, the wage was awful and not nearly enough for an enhanced growing teenager to be well fed.
peter stopped briefly to dump his empty cup in a bin. he glanced around at the busy street, noticing a small boy staring at him in wonder.
he winked, his lens contracting, and the boy giggled delightedly.
an hour later, he was panting heavily on top of a tall building, roughly half the size of Stark Tower.
he winced as he studied the gash in his arm where a nasty criminal had sliced him.
peter took his mask off for a few moments to wipe the sweat off his brow.
he hadn't exerted himself like this in a while. taking on a whole clique of thieves wasn't easy.
he tugged his mask back down and studied the wound. it wasn't too deep, but it a fair amount of blood was trickling down his suit. fuckin hell, he'd only just washed the thing.
he braced himself for the pain as he lifted his webshooter on the other wrist and sealed the wound with sticky web.
maybe he could rest for a bit, he thought, looking out at the bustling city in the cool evening air.
it was nearly golden hour, and the view, though he saw it almost every day, was still incredible to see.
"that's a no on the rest" he muttered to himself as his enhanced hearing picked up distant screams.
he took a few paces back, then sprinted forward, leaping off the roof to swing across the streets.
peter could see police cars already making their way over from above, and he increased his speed, not wanting to interact with any cops.
sure, most of them recognised his goodwill and how beneficial his presence was in the city, but he was still a vigilante.
as he neared the source of commotion, he groaned at the sight before him.
it seemed some of the avengers were there;he spotted iron man blasting something a couple of rooftops over, and hawkeye perched up on a building, yelling something into an earpiece.
peter sighed. he had yet to actually interact with the heroes, he usually just helped them from afar by swinging civilians to safety and occasionally webbing up a stray enemy here and there.
he made sure he swung away before the fight was over to avoid actually facing them.
he couldn't risk mr stark or any of them figuring out who he was. they'd ship him off to CPS.
it seemed there was a man in a large mechanised suit, quite like Mr Stark's, but less graceful, as it clunked over to a building and fired a few lasers, causing debris to crash down on to the street where people ran about, screaming.
if that wasn't annoying enough, the metal robot guy(the suit looked like it resembled some sort of bionic rhino) seemed to be controlling dozens of drones at the same time as exploding the area with a violent cocktail of bombs and lasers.
the drones were quick, and zoomed through the air, firing bullets out of machine gun-like turrets attached to their metal hides.
the man roared curses at the avengers as they approached, peter saw (with suppressed childlike excitement) captain america and the falcon dodging blasts and jumping off rubble like pros.
peter leapt into the air and flipped before landing on top of a car next to a girl about his age in an alley.
he felt his neck tingle as his spidey sense warned him, and he jumped down and wrapped his arms round her waist before swinging them up on to the rooftop, her shrieking loudly in his ear. ow.
he set her down, ignoring her fangirling squeals, and scanned for other threats below.
with a jolt, peter realised one of the avengers hadn't noticed as a drone came up behind them and seemed to zero in on them as a target.
the winter soldier was up on a ledge like hawkeye, emptying rounds of bullets into the aggressive rhino, unaware as a drone hovered above him.
peter sprinted forward and jumped, swinging with intense speed across the street, narrowly avoiding a surprised iron man that was aiming his repulsors at the metal droids.
peter knew he was being risky, being out in the open like this, but the avenger was in danger.
he saw the winter soldier's eyes widen as he came flying towards him. he released the web and dived towards the ledge, bracing for impact.
he landed heavily, skidding across the stone, but wasted no time in quickly webbing the drone behind him.
the drone made several sputtering noises, sparks flying as peter tugged the flying machine in towards him and crushed it with his strength, ignoring the look of shock on mr barnes's face.
peter grinned as he slammed the machine onto the ground.
"i-you.. thanks" he heard a gruff voice say, and peter glanced up at the black-clad assasin, who was loosely holding his machine gun and looking warily at him
peter opened his mouth to say something witty when he heard a "heads up!" down below, and captain america's shield came spinning toward them.
peter fired a web and tugged it toward him, catching the metal disk in his other arm (ignoring the twinge of pain as he flexed the wounded muscle).
the assassin chuckled, and peter wasn't sure if he should run or not.
ahhh fuck it. they'd already noticed his presence, from the way he could see several of the heroes talking into their earpieces and looking at him curiously.
"excuse me, mr america sir! you seem to have misplaced your frisbee!" he called down from the ledge.
the soldier broke a drone over his knee, and glanced up at the spider, amusement flickering on his serious face.
"very funny" he deadpanned, and peter grinned behind his mask.
he threw his shield back, and the blonde caught it with ease, shooting him a grateful glance before dashing off to help the black widow.
"you're the spider guy? the vigilante?" he heard mr barnes say, and peter turned and nodded.
"the one and only" he quipped, and was pleased to see a faint smile on the man's face.
the winter soldier had always seemed quiet and distant whenever the avengers were portayed on the news, and having heard of his past, peter wasn't surprised
"you help us out sometimes. thank you for that" the man continued, and peter made to respond with yet another witty zinger when another avenger interrupted.
"talk later, knuckleheads!" the falcon yelled as he soared past with his wing pack, several drones hot on his tail
peter smirked. "knuckleheads?"
the supersoldier beside him rolled his eyes as he replaced the magazine on his rifle.
"he's right. you sound young, but ive seen you on the news and you seem like you can hold your own out there. care to stay and help?"
"I got time" peter said coolly, winking at mr barnes before agilely flipping down on to the rubble-littered tarmac below.
he scanned the fight, surprised the avengers hadn't defeated the robot guy yet.
it seemed they were fighting to maim, reluctant to actually kill the goon inside the massive suit.
he admired that, and spotting an unstable rooftop groaning on damaged foundations, he quickly swung over.
peter nodded a greeting to the scarlet witch, who was currently standing on the concrete aside the area, pulses of red magic issuing from outstretched hands.
the bright scarlet tendrils were surrounding the damaged structure, keeping a wave of devastating debris from tumbling onto the trapped civilians below.
peter made quick work of ducking under the mess and reaching his good arm down to help the people out.
a few minutes later, the people were thanking him and the fellow enhanced beside him, sobbing as they ran for safety.
the maximoff twin sighed with relief as she let the rubble cascade onto the pavement.
she turned to thank the vigilante, but found nothing but an empty spot, and looked up to see him flying through the air from a strand of web before plummeting dangerously low to the ground.
despite their fumbling start, the heroes made quick work of the 'rhino' after that. iron man had apparently found several weaknesses in the great hulking metal suit, but had been hesitant to aim for them and risk hurting the dumbass inside.
it had ended when mr rogers had impressively vaulted off of a car and onto the back of the automaton, planting some sort of device the falcon had tossed him.
peter had looked away at that point, but the gadget must have been effective as he heard the roar of defeat, the machine keeling over on the street with a heavy clang.
mr stark had tried to engage peter in conversation several times throughout the fight, but peter thought it best to just lay low for the rest of the time;he'd already made an impression.
peter panted heavily, feeling the weight of exhaustion in his bones.
if he had access to proper meals and nutrition, he'd be three times more effective, this fight wouldn't even faze him, but he had to rely on cheap crap to see him through the day, consequently weakening him and his abilities.
sighing, he let himself fall back onto the hard rooftop, dramatically lying spread-eagled on the surface.
he closed his tired eyes as he caught his breath, and listened to the blaring of cop cars and the other disturbed sounds.
what an interesting birthday.
"yo! webs!"
he forced himself to open his eyes and sit up, peering down at where the avengers had grouped around the fallen criminal.
"I'm on a break!" he yelled back to the billionaire who had removed his metal helmet and was looking up at him with an amused expression.
"you sound like, twelve!" the man snarked, and he saw hawkeye smirk.
"how old are you, son?" the captain asked, brushing off his shield. peter was surprised at how.. normal.. some of their actions were. like mr barnes leaning on captain america's shoulder to dislodge a pebble from his boot.
peter sighed and jumped up, opting to sit on the side of the building with his red and blue suited legs dangling off the edge.
"nu-uh" he said, mockingly wagging a finger.
"you don't get to know that, señor. part of the whole secret identity shiz"
he heard black widow laugh and mutter "I like him" to wanda, who grinned.
"well this has been absolutely smashing - literally - but i better be off. things to do, people to stick down, ya'll know how it is" he exclaimed cheerily, getting to his feet and stretching.
iron man began to protest, but wanda spoke up. "thank you for your help, spidey" she called, waving.
peter grinned at the nickname, did the stupid salute again, and flipped away.