“I’ve stabilised the building for now, I’ll continue evacuation as quickly as possible.” Peter’s voice filtered through the comms, it was rough with exhaustion and pain – understandable as he stared at the 20 support beams coated in speed-seal-webs which only 2 minutes ago had been crumbling.
It was Avenger-level-threat 4 of the month, and it was only the 20th. Spider-Man had the stamina to keep up with such threats, the stamina to stay on top of the fights and be where he was needed. Peter Parker on the other hand, did not, only a week into the end of exam season and he hadn’t slept in 3 days.
Spider-Man couldn’t work if Peter Parker was working past both their limits.
Limits didn’t matter though, the families trapped in the quaking building with only a few minutes left on its life was what mattered.
He was the one on crowd control and he hadn’t yet managed to evacuate everyone, spending two minutes too long stabilising the building that he should have evacuated sooner. He could hear their cries, the sobs of children and their parents, the prayers of those religious, the phone-calls being made that nobody should receive, and the clattering of people trying to push down the stairwell.
“OK. I want you out before the building collapses though Queens.” Captain America’s voice sounded too static over the comms; Spider-Man had taken a hit to the head already damaging his multi-million dollar suit that Tony Stark exclaimed was nearly indestructible.
No reply was given, if he did the static and roughness of his voice would give away that maybe, just maybe, this was out of Spider-Man’s strength and Peter Parker’s brain ability.
One in the same yet different people all at once. It was why the Avengers didn’t know, why they didn’t know who Spider-Man was under the mask. Because Peter learnt that early on, Spider-Man was Spider-Man and Peter Parker was Peter Parker, they were different people and it had to stay that way.
Running from the ground floor level of support beams he made quick pace up to the 4th floor, the only floor he could hear people on. Of course, it had been the top floor which hadn’t evacuated, they took the first hit. The first alien blast hit the side of their floor.
Internally he was cursing himself out because Spider-Man had been to that floor and shot a web across the damage, focusing on the people rushing out the building instead of checking inside.
“SPIDER-MAN!”
“OVER HERE!”
“OUR FRIEND, PLEASE!”
The chorus of yells announced the arrival of the first group he was getting to safety, a group of 4 women in their mid-20s. Three looked perfectly fine aside from the dust coating their clothes and the tear tracks in heavy use down their face, the other didn’t fare so well a harsh looking trickle of blood seeping from the side of her head.
First course of action was webbing the roof, unsure of the stability of any of the rooms on a floor recently hit. Next, he gingerly made his way over to the group of women, despite them knowing he was safe they could easily be in shock.
“How long have they been unconscious?” Peter gently placed his fingers against the warm skin of the woman’s neck (doing his best to avoid the blood he should have prevented). Her pulse was strong, a very good sign, and her breathing was stable, another sign.
“A few minutes now, she definitely has a concussion. Exactly how old Brian looked when he fell down the stairs.” The woman holding the unconscious woman into her chest filled in the details alongside the reasoning behind why she thoughts so, he didn’t need the story, but he rambled when he was scared so no comment was made.
“The entire building is stable for now. I want you all to leave down the stairs I went up and leave out the back entrance. Always stay below a web, if this building goes down, they’ll be the difference of life and death.” He wanted to help the unconscious woman, to wrap her head in bandages he didn’t have and call Doctor Cho over to give her some painkillers, but he didn’t have time for that everyone needed out yesterday.
The entire way up he’d created the path with his webs along the ceiling and to the floor, they wouldn’t do much if the floor below you gave way, but they would if the roof above did. That was the way the building was going down though so all he could do was hope. All he ever did was hope.
The women scuttled along, one staring at the roof to follow the path while the other two held their friend between them, an arm under each leg and the other held behind her back. It was the heart-breaking and warming sight seen every day, having to see your friend in so much pain yet willing to do anything to help them out.
The rest of the civilians were simple, children happy to do whatever a hero told them, their parents willing to do anything so they could see their child grow up, and all those on their own spoke of families close by who’d be devastated to lose them.
A few minutes ticked by into 10 minutes and 10 minutes ticked by into 25. Everyone was out the building except Spider-Man who stupidly said to a small child he’d try look for their stuffed bunny, dropped in the apartment lobby.
Peter’s calculations gave him 30 minutes at a maximum, but he was looking for the bunny because as Ned and MJ always said he was a self-sacrificial idiot.
He’d always denied that statement, that he had the power to do something so he must. His actions had nothing to do with him being self-sacrificial. Now, watching as the first web stretch and snap he believed those words because he’d known he didn’t have any power in this situation.
“The buildings going down, stay clear!” Hawkeye’s voice crackled over the comm so suddenly as the first support beam went down, so quickly followed by the second, third, and fourth.
Hawkeye should be on the building across unless he had missed a plan change while he was evacuating, besides Peter he was the only one who noticed the initial swaying that had been the first near collapse.
“Queens is everyone out?” Cap’s voice was the next, or maybe it wasn’t. Peter wasn’t paying attention, sending shot of web after shot of web to the beams trying to prevent the inevitable. This was so many people’s homes; he couldn’t let it collapse. They’d lose their safety.
“Yup. Trying to restabilise now.” Peter’s voice was low and hissed. Self-sacrificial idiot. He knew he couldn’t restabilise; the first time had been a one in a thousand chance it was now one in a billion.
“That’s not going to work Underoos, get out.” Iron Man. Tony Stark. Mr. Stark. The only person who knew who Spider-Man was under the mask.
He was Peter’s mentor and boss alongside a steadily growing father figure relationship. The only person that Peter knew he would listen to, sending a quick few webs to ensure time and booking it for the exit.
If only he didn’t spot the bunny. If only he wasn’t so exhausted. If only he’d slept the night before. If only he’d listened to his spidey-sense.
If only.
The building thundered to the ground with one final twang of the webs and Peter wasn’t underneath any of his safety-web-pathways.
Silence engulfed all of Peter’s senses and ever since the spider bite that had been something he’d never believed he’d experience again.
He couldn’t see, a film of pitch black covering his eyes. Were his eyes closed?
He couldn’t hear, not even the usual buzzing of the walls. Was there explosion that damaged his ears?
He couldn’t smell, there was always a smell in New York. Had he been kidnapped?
He couldn’t feel, the soft fluffiness of his suit wasn’t present against his skin. Was he drugged?
He couldn’t taste, not even the slightly rancid taste of the bitter kiwi super soldier bars. Had he even eaten a super soldier bar recently?
Then, like an explosion did happen, everything went off at once. Dialled to 100% and if possible, further.
He could see the smallest flecks of dust he didn’t believe even Tony Stark’s microscopes could notice.
He could hear a little boy miles and miles away discussing why chicken nuggets were the best food in a hushed voice to his toys.
He could smell the open sewers on the other side of New York as they were filtered through water cleaner after water cleaner.
He could feel as those tiny flecks of dust skimmed the edge of his solid metal suit.
He could taste the toothpaste he’d used more than 6 hours ago in the back of his mouth, between his final two molars.
This was a sensory overload worse than the spider bite, amplified by pain, panic, and exhaustion. He was engulfed in his senses and the sudden very apparent pressure to everywhere below his neck – luckily nothing above, only just having managed to shoot a funnily aimed web upwards when it did fall, and he noticed no escape.
“Underoos? Answer us Underoos, where are you?”
“Queens we need an answer now!”
“I can’t see anything from here, the entire building is surrounded in a ploom of dust and stuff.”
“I can’t see Spidey anywhere around the building, I’ll circle it again.”
“маленький паук answer us.”
All of a sudden, his senses dialled down, allowing him to hear what was around his instead of the several miles away that his mind was focusing on.
The Avengers were worried for him, why?
Oh, right. The building. The building that was crushing his body and causing the steady pool of sticky redness underneath him.
“I… I’m he-re.” His voice sounded worse than when it gravelled in tiredness, it was broken and showed the fact he had inhaled enough dust to start blocking his lungs. He sounded like he had been smoking 100 a day for the past 16 years of his life.
“Are you OK Queens?” Peter could barely make the crackle of Cap’s voice, it had such a crackly, static sound he questioned how it had gone so unnoticed when he first pulled out of the sensory overload.
From the sound of the comm alone Peter knew it was on death’s doorstep, one more slight hit to it and it wouldn’t manage to get him in contact with someone if they were lying beside him. Joining him in the pool of stickiness.
The pool of his blood.
“Think so…” He didn’t think so. Alongside his senses going back to normal, his normal, he could feel every injury on his body. Every tiny little cut was identifiable because it throbbed with his heartbeat.
“Mute all co-comm connections ‘nd me for a sec’nd Karen…” He could sense his injuries, but Karen could give him the rundown of what was dangerous and what wasn’t. Karen could tell him if it was worth asking them to save him or to call the morgue.
There was always a quiet click when the comm’s microphone was muted, usually it happened automatically. Today it took 30 seconds, 30 gruelling seconds of the Avengers telling him not to mute himself.
“You have… muted.” Peter wanted to sob at the reply, Karen was damaged. Because of him the AI he loved so dearly and spent hours coding to incorporate memes and vines was so damaged she couldn’t create a full sentence.
Maybe it was a head injury or the blood loss. He knew he shouldn’t want to cry over that, fixing Karen was as simple as moving the copying the coding from the main frame to the new device. It would be the exact same Karen in his next suit whether this suit was scrapped or not, but yet he still wanted to cry for her.
“What ar’ my inj’ries Kar’n...?” His words shouldn’t be becoming more slurred together as he spoke, even in the very first medical course he’d been told that was a very bad thing. Severe concussion, Brain damage, Blood loss, Bleeding internally. All of those could cause this and all of those were bad.
“Shattered… leg. Pipe… arm. … Concussion… … Ribs… Lung punctured…” Karen didn’t need to be working properly for Peter to understand he was in a bad place, working healing factor or not that needed immediate medical attention.
He didn’t have a working healing factor right now; his exams indivertibly were going to kill him. He’d said to Mr. Stark they would, explained that these exams would kill him, the billionaire should have listened.
“’nm’te Kar’n…” Longer this time, 30 seconds slipped to 40, 40 to 50, and 50 to 60. Peter was beginning to question whether Karen had broken down before he had managed the chance to get back in communication with the heroes.
He was going to tell them, and he needed Karen to turn the comms back on for that because he couldn’t move his arms or his legs or his head or his back. He was fucked, well and truly fucked if Karen was out for the count.
“Underoos you better answer this fucking instant.”
“Tony, can you connect to his AI? Get her to turn of the suits cloaking so I can track his heat signature from the sky?”
“Queens I need a report now.”
The Avenger’s voices had risen slightly, they were shouting over the comms for him as the click finally rattled through the silence. Them shouting was a good thing, it meant they didn’t care for attracting attention to themselves so the fight must be over. Or they were also self-sacrificial idiots.
“Shhh…” Trying to silence the Avengers was the stupid choice after just cutting communication with them, especially in Peter’s situation. Mr. Stark would kill him for putting himself in a dangerous position, Natasha would kill him for not answering her, Steve would kill him for endangering himself.
They’d all kill him. They were too protective for their own good and only Mr. Stark actually knew he was a legitimate child and not the 20-year-old everyone else thought he was. They’d kill him for scaring them despite not actually knowing him.
“Spidey, we need a status report. Are you injured?” Clint’s voice was the first to break through the shocked silence that they’d actually got a reply. Peter was slowly realising that they knew nothing of the situation, they couldn’t know if he was lightly hit by the building, was crushed as he was, or had escaped but someone else hadn’t.
“B’ldin” Peter couldn’t make out what he was saying any more, he couldn’t remember where he was or why he was there. His name felt fuzzy like it was locked away at the back of his mind and his memories of the day were nonexistent.
Was he trying to get help? Why was he trying to get help?
“What did you say Underoos? Your mic is too quiet you’ll need to speak up.”
“маленький паук did you just say building?”
“Shit wait- Is Spider-Man under the building? Spidey? Did you make it out?”
“Shit shit shit shit shit. Capsicle you’ve got to get to him.”
“Queens have your AI send your location.”
“Underoos, underoos come on, you’ve got to answer us kid. Don’t be a sacrificial fuck and just tell us where you are!”
Sacrificial.
MJ called Peter that, didn’t she?
Self-sacrificial idiot.
Whose MJ and Peter? Why are they talking about a building?
“Connected to Karen. Location of Spider-Man sent to all Avenger suits.” He knew that voice, why was it in his ear? There was nobody around how was he hearing all these voices?
Remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember.
(>0-0)>
“I’ve got a heat signature, he’s directly under the rubble of the front exit. Shit that’s not good, you should get there soon Steve I don’t think even Spider-Man will hold up under that.” Tony could hear Sam explaining where the Spider-Man was located but all he could think about was the boy under the mask, the 16-year-old boy who was harmed by this world too young.
He wouldn’t allow him to be taken from the world yet. This was his fault, Tony’s fault, he had said it was a good idea to involve Spider-Man for evacuations, the one who pushed in all team meetings that Spider-Man was a good addition, the one who trained and helped Peter to be Spider-Man.
‘And if you die, that’s on me.’
“You need to get their fast. Friday can’t connect properly to Karen, she completely crashed.” Tony sounded pathetic, his voice wobbling and the start of a panic attack clouding the corner of his vision as he shot across the battlefield to where there used to be a building.
His intern. His mentee. His son. Lay underneath crushed now with no way to contact them or receive contact from them.
“I’m going as fast as possible Tony but if I lift something too fast the building will just collapse in further, crushing him.” Steve sounded so worried, panic edging into his voice for the spider themed hero he’d come to enjoy sparing with. The only person who could beat Steve was lying under a building and he was either saving him or killing him.
“Tony, you need to calm down. Panicking won’t do anything for the dude, he’s strong he’ll be fine.” Clint was trying to be supportive; he was trying to wrangle in the panic attack very close to putting Tony out of the equation for at least an hour.
Tony knew he was trying to help, he really did, but all his panicked mind could focus in on was Clint calling him ‘dude’. Ned called Peter dude all the time, why should it matter? Why did it matter when Clint did it and not Ned?
Because Ned meant it in a friendly, banter way. Clint meant it in he’s a grown adult.
“He’s fucking 16. He won’t be fucking fine!” He shouldn’t snap at his teammates. Tony knew he shouldn’t snap at his teammates, he should be at Steve’s side helping calculate which rubble to lift and which not, he should be on the phone to Bruce and Helen with Natasha to get Peter to safety.
He should be doing something other than panicking. But what rationality should you have when there was no certain way to know if your child was alive or not despite being almost right beside you.
“Shit. No- We don’t have time for ages. Tony come here and help me move the rubble, Clint and Sam do a quick run around and check we got all the aliens, Natasha keep Bruce and Helen up to date on the situation… Mention Queens’ age.”
“Understood.”
“On it.”
“Will do Cap.”
“I’m here Cap move over and let Friday scan the rubble.” Tony knew he wouldn’t be calm if Steve hadn’t moved on so quickly from the statement and allowed him to help out. Peter would have to be OK because when Steve heard a heartbeat stop, he stopped, and he was yet to stop.
And he wouldn’t stop. Tony wouldn’t allow him to stop. Couldn’t.
The rubble was moved much faster with two sets of hands and Friday’s scanners, informing them of which piece they could move and how to move it instead of them having to nudge it and wait as Steve had been doing before.
Floor after floor was removed, some being stuck together with web showing that they did have the right building. And eventually, ever so eventually, they thinned to the final floor – a cocoon of webs on one side and a tomb of rubble on the other.
Peter lay motionless on the ground when they finally got through to him, the sickening pungent smell of his blood bursting from a slowly forming puddle.
“Natasha inform… Inform them that there’s a pipe through his left arm, bone sticking out of his leg, large bash to his lower stomach, large unspecifiable head wound, and probably a lot more wounds than I’ve not noticed.” Steve was trying not to retch up his guts. Tony could feel his own stomach wrap itself in the same knots as he stared down at the sight in front of them.
Peter was oh so pale, despite Shuri calling him the palest person she’d even seen he’d somehow got lighter. Now holding a sickly grey colour that allowed the bruises and blood to stand out so strongly.
His lips were parted viewable by the fact at some point Peter had lifted the mask from everywhere but his ears and forehead, trying to help himself breathe.
The terrifying part was he looked so much smaller than he ever had, each piece of rubble around him almost or more than double his size. Peter looked so small in a puddle of blood much, much larger than his form was.
“-Ony… Tony! Tony, you need to breathe, we won’t be able to do anything with you panicking. I need you to lift him and carry him back to the tower, it’s OK if you can’t. 100% OK, Sam can do it just as easily if you don’t think you can do it.” Steve was giving him options, assuring him that there was no right and no wrong. For once, somebody had listened to Rhodey.
“No. He’s my- I’ll be faster.” Tony couldn’t say it, couldn’t bring him to title the relationship as he saw it because was it going to last? Nobody was able to tell him if Peter would survive the trip back to the tower let alone all the hours of emergency surgery he’d so obviously need. Saying the title would make losing him so much harder.
“Alright. Bruce says to be incredibly careful; we don’t know about any spinal injuries, and we don’t want to agitate any others either.” Steve moved to the side, allowing Tony the space to crouch down to the ground. He couldn’t think of a time he’d been this scared since Rhodey’s injury, and this seemed worse. So much panic because deep down he knew Rhodey would survive, there was no confirmation for Peter. None.
The flight back to the tower was too long, Friday repeating off Peter’s slowly dropping vitals every half a minute to either him or a doctor on Natasha’s line, Steve whispering whatever calming words he could think of Clint and Sam coming up with every reassuring thing they could say, and Peter’s jagged laboured breathes.
Peter’s breathes were the worst because Tony shouldn’t be able to hear them, he didn’t have enhanced hearing like the super soldiers or spider mutate in his arms nor did he have any technology currently enhancing it. He could hear Peter’s breathes because he was struggling so much to take them.
Each breathe sounded like it bubbled back up and clogged in his lungs. A puncture wound filling his lungs.
Peter was going to die and it was his fault that he hadn’t told the boy to rest at home instead. He knew Peter was tired, knew the boy had been working way too hard for his powers to be up to par. Yet they needed all hands-on deck, so he ignored it.
‘And if you die, that’s on me.’
(>*0*)>
“He’s a child… An actual child! I was joking whenever I called him a child, but he’s a child!” Clint was pacing back and forth in the Med-Bay’s waiting room with many other of his teammates, ones who weren’t out for the battle slowly trickling in as they heard the news.
They were on hour 2 of surgery with no update and Clint was the first to speak, his mind finally wrapping round Spider-Man’s age. The age Spider-Man shared with Clint’s eldest. The age which should be spent sneaking past your parents to go to parties not to fight aliens.
“Why didn’t you tell us? I would have stopped him from coming if I knew he was a fucking child Stark. He shouldn’t be doing this!” Natasha flung an accusatory finger towards Tony despite knowing he didn’t deserve it, rocking himself back and forth in a plastic chair ringing his hands so tightly they’d long gone white and were changing to blue.
Natasha knew she wasn’t someone who could talk, taking children much younger than Spider-Man on random missions around the world in absolutely no gear. Tony had created the suit only describable as the best of the best, containing more safety precautions than any of the suits he’d ever created.
But she was mad, mad at herself for not noticing the childish behaviours and the way to light voice, the form that resembled one still growing, and the actions mimicking the same as her niece and nephews.
She was one of the best spies in the world and she couldn’t figure out Spider-Man was a child even though he wasn’t exactly hiding it.
“We wouldn’t have been mad at you for this. Just telling us would have been helpful so we knew to watch out for him more.” Steve sounded so tired, running his hand through his beard over and over continuously looking to his shoulder to check Bucky’s real hand was still there for comfort.
There was a hollow look in his eyes, hollow from looking at the gory sight, hollow from hearing every time there was a shrill alarm at Spider-Man’s heart monitor losing the child again, and hollow from the memories of when he did that to people.
“That’s enough. All of you. I understand you’re mad at Tony from hiding Spider-Man’s identity from us, I am too. However, this is not Tony’s fault, Spider-Man worked as a vigilante for 4 years before Tony came along. That’s in his crappy sweatpants suit from the ages of 10 to 14. When Tony came along, he gave him a suit, obviously trained him, and has done everything to keep him safe. Since Tony has been in contact with Spider-Man his injury rates have dropped by 86%. He should have told us, yes, we could have done much more to help. But Spider-Man didn’t want his identity revealed and Tony did his best fucking job at protecting that and him.” Rhodey had a fire in his eyes as he looked over all his teammates before turning quickly back to Tony where he carefully ran his fingers through his friend’s hair, a calming method Pepper had figured out after a particularly bad nightmare.
Rhodey was mad at his friend for keeping the age from them, they were a team and deserved to know the secrets that could cause harm. However, he’d seen both Tony Stark and Peter Parker together in the lab too many times to know that it wasn’t specifically an Iron Man and Spider-Man interaction-based relationship.
Tony had done everything in his power to protect the boy ever since he realised, he couldn’t get him to stop, that was why Rhodey had decided to become friends with him. He was so hard-headed, so stubborn, and so emotionally unavailable in the publics eyes but once you got to know him, he was the overprotective, kind-hearted man that was already on his fourth panic attack about the future of one child.
“Sorry. Rhodey’s right, you’ve done your best to protect him. We’re just worried, y’know. I keep thinking ‘What if it was Cooper’, the kids the exact age and has the exact same want to help.” Clint stopped his pacing briefly to offer a watery smile to Tony who was finally looking up from his hands, allowing Rhodey to pry them apart to prevent further damage.
“He- I tried stopping him once. 2 years ago, now, right after the whole accords disaster… I took his suit off him then. Basically, told him if he couldn’t see himself in the suit, he didn’t deserve it and then flew off… He put his old suit back on and continued, he got a building dropped on him then and he was on the jet when it crashed into Cooney Island. I knew then that the best thing to do was let him continue just at my side.” Tony chuckled lightly at the reminder of the memories of their fight after Happy had informed him about the plane. Peter had slipped about the warehouse falling on him and when Tony had then questioned him about it, he’d gone bright red and tried to claim he meant LEGO warehouse.
“I knew he wasn’t his best today… I should have stopped him.” Tony choked out another sob before burying his head into Rhodey’s shoulder, who had just, so conveniently, moved himself closer encase such a thing happened.
The Avengers surrounding stared at the shaking billionaire, his body trembling with loud grief-stricken sobs. This wasn’t the billionaire they knew who threw sarcasm around left, right, and centre. This was the father to a child who was way to careless with his life, a father who had already convinced himself he was going to hear the worst after Steve froze a fourth, fifth, and sixth time.
“My teammate hadn’t slept once before, too many nightmares about Reykov. I still let her go out and fight. She died that day, shot 14 times through the head and heart. Was that my fault?”
“Of course, not Natashalie.”
“Then why is this kid getting harmed your fault? If it’s not mine, why’s it yours? It’s the exact same situation except Spider-Man isn’t going to die because he’s a fucking hard-headed moron just like you.”
“I-… Thank you…” Tony had needed that, needed someone to force him to at least consider that it wasn’t his fault. He still blamed himself, of course he did, as Natasha said he was a hard-headed moron, but just slightly less.
“What’s the kids name? Can’t keep calling him Spidey or Spider-Freak as I’ve been doing, can I?” Bucky smiled as he thought about the nickname fights, he and Spider-Man had started, causing such chaos between the team as everyone pulled out all the stoppers to find the worst nicknames for the others.
“Peter Parker, right? He’s your personal intern, at least I think that’s what Pepper said the other week.” Tony perked up at Rhodey’s open statement, he knew it was just a way to get him talking. To get his head away from the swirling darkness that beckoned, he’d take it regardless. He was always to ramble about the smarts of Peter Parker, the absolute genius of the kid who managed to pass MIT entrance exams on accident when Tony met him.
(/o0o)/
“He’s stable and ready for visitors. Or are you all going to continue chatting?” Bruce quirked an eyebrow lightly, yawning halfway through his sentence ruining the light-hearted look he was going for.
The surgery had taken 6 hours and 26 minutes. Every time the kid’s heartrate stopped, they had to stop, allow his body to catch up before they could preform any more of the process. In all honesty, nobody in the theatre had believed he was going to survive – losing someone 10 times before the first hour was up did that.
Both lungs had been punctured by shattered ribs which had to carefully be put back in place, his leg had been reassembled after most of the bones had been shattered past anything they’d ever seen, the pole was awful as well trying to remove it with as little blood loss as possible.
Everything about the experience would leave the medical, and most likely hero, team with nightmares for months to come.
At 3 hours they’d still believed they were going to lose him, only just having managed to stabilise and clear both lungs when Spider-Man awoke, trying to push himself into a sitting position so suddenly he ripped the fresh stitches in his stomach. The medications were all doubled at that point.
At 4 hours he woke again, the doubled medications becoming tripled as Spider-Man’s enhanced metabolism and healing came back in full force. Hour 4 was when they were certain he would survive, with the nutrients running through the IV meaning the wounds were fixing themselves as soon as the stitches brought the skin together and bruises slowly erasing themselves from his skin.
5 and 6 were disturbed by stirring leading to quadrupled medication, quadrupled super soldier medication. But they were done, finally having every bone back in place, every stitch laid, every bandage tightened, and every cast set.
Spider-Man would survive.
“He’s on quadruple the strength we give Steve right now, which luckily seems to be keeping him under. If he awakes and is in pain, we’ll give him more however I’m hoping this will be enough. His metabolism and healing are incredible, and I’d love to learn more about it when he’s better.” Bruce spoke calmly as they walked through the Med-Bay halls, leading them to the ICU. Despite being out of the woods there were too many machines connected to the boy for anyone to even consider putting him anywhere other than the ICU.
“The kid would commit murder without questioning it if you asked Brucie. I think you’ll easily manage to get him to do some tests for you.” Tony hummed lightly, the 4 hours since the original sentences shared had lightened his mood and being told that his kid was stable made it even better.
“He- He likes me? Not just Hulk?” Bruce’s cheeks changed shade with a slight powdering of red as he led them deeper into the ICU, close enough to Peter’s room that Steve and Bucky could hear the rhythmic beating of a heart Steve had barely heard 6 and a half hours ago.
“It’s terrifying honestly. Says he’s been reading, and understanding, your work since he was 8. But yeah, Peter absolutely loves your work. Sometimes question if he likes you more than he likes me at times.” Tony grumbled the last part of his statement at the laughter of his teammates, the idea of the boy he’d claimed as his son preferring the other scientist over him being hilarious to them. Bruce turned an even redder shade which allowed for even more laughter.
The turning of the corner had them stopping though, instead of turning to see the sleeping form of Peter Parker they’d expected they were met with the boy sitting up straight in his bed picking at the bandages at his arm curiously, his face lighting up as he noticed the group before wincing as he moved too fast.
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
“Eh. This IV is giving me so many calories I think my body is healing scars at this point, what’s in this thing? Magic?”
“Kid what the fuck are you thinking? What the fuck where you thinking?”
“Tones, calm down. He’s here and safe.”
“I am currently thinking that I miss Karen and I was thinking that I’m going to miss Karen. Next question.”
“You’re going to be the death of us Queens.”
“Try doing it without a building, apparently that doesn’t work.”
“That’s it! Brucie put him back under, I don’t want him awake for another 6 months!”
“I mean drop the temperature a few degrees and I’ll hibernate for you.”
“What the actual fuck is going on?”