"Pete, I need your help!"
Tony gave the ladder a final kick as if it was personally responsible for his inability to climb.
"Yeah, what's up, Mr. Stark?"
Peter skidded around the corner, mismatching socks sliding against the polished floor. Tony eyed him having to reach his hands out and grab the doorjamb to prevent faceplanting before Tony's feet.
"Smooth, kid. Very gracious," Tony drawled dryly, smirking at the rising blush painting the kid's cheeks.
"The floor is too slippery."
"You're sticky."
"Not all the time," Peter balanced on his tiptoes, trying to glimpse inside the elevator over Tony's shoulder, "You need help?"
"Yeah. Can you be sticky now? Could really come in handy."
"Sure." He abandoned his place and eagerly swerved around his mentor. "What you need me for?"
"I need you to climb up and switch this," Tony showed him a small black box, the size of his palm, "for the other one in the maintenance hatch."
Reaching over the kid's head, Tony pointed through the hatch in the elevator roof, angling Peter's head towards the yellow handle a few feet up.
"Should have done it myself, but I think this is what Dr. Brucie would file under unnecessary risks."
As if Peter wouldn't get the point, Tony waved his broken hand close to the kid's nose. White, bulky, and stupid cast illuminated in the bright light.
Tony's hand still on his head, Peter turned with a skeptic scowl.
"Since when do you listen to what Dr. Banner says?" The scowl quickly morphed into a knowing grin. "You tried and failed, didn't you? You couldn't get up there-"
"Get your spider-butt up there," Tony smacked him over the head with his good hand, "and wipe that smirk off your face."
Crawling up and replacing the circuit box took no time at all. Peter only got a tiny bit unfocused when he noticed a big cluster of spiders on the opposite wall.
Spiders gave him the creeps.
Ironically.
Thank God he didn't need to go there.
"Great work, kiddo! Now," Tony disappeared from Peter's sight for a moment, only to reappear with a thin blue cable in his outstretched hand, "turn around and switch this in that other panel.
Peter froze. Did he say turn around? Towards the creepy crawlies?
"Uhm, do I have to?" Peter's voice did not waver. Not. At. All.
"Greatly appreciated, kid."
"Uhm," he side-eyed the webs, "No-oo?"
"No?" Tony's confused face met him peeking up the hatch.
"Don't wanna," Peter slowly edged back down the shaft.
"Oh, okay. Did I miss the memo about some spiderling work laws?" He flung the cable through the hole in the roof. "Just switch it, Pete."
"But Mr. Stark," he didn't whine, "there- there are spiders up here."
Stunned silence filled the air. Peter kept a close eye on the other occupants of the elevator shaft. They crawled over the opposite hatch and red handle, webs gently swaying in the barely-there breeze.
Tony didn't laugh. To be honest, he was too stunned to.
This kid.
"Kid, you're a part spider. You're a spider-lord, or spider-king, or whatever. Order them to move."
"I'm not creepy and don't have eight hairy legs, Mr. Stark," he shivered and hissed, "and I can't talk to them!"
Glad the kid couldn't see the ridiculous grin on his face, Tony shook his head.
"Fine, crawl down. I'm gonna get Nat."
Tony turned to find the spy. He didn't really look forward to asking her to crawl up a dusty elevator shaft. When not in super-spy mode, she's a surprisingly neat freak.
"What? No, wait, Uhm," Peter knew Natasha wasn't fond of spiders either. It would be mean to force her in there. Right? "No, I can do it."
"You sure?"
"Yeah," he cleared his squeaking voice and tried again. "Yeah."
Taking a long way round, Peter slowly crawled nearer. "Shoo, shoo. If you understand me, please move." Nothing. "I order you to move." Still nothing, except a suspicious cough from beneath.
"Doing good, Spider-Lord."
"Shut up," he hissed. Peter rarely used harsh language towards his mentor, but he thought this was an exception. "Ugh, ugh," he could already feel them over his body. Spindly legs, running up and down his arms, underneath his collar, and-
Nope, focus and do it.
Turn the handle. Open the hatch. Unplug and plug it in
Avoid the spiders.
Don't swear too much at Mr. Stark.
"Okay, Spider-man," pep-talking his hero self didn't help shit.
But never the less, he stretched his arm forward and pushed his face back at the same time, gripped the handle, and rotated.
A narrow compartment opened up before him. Peter squinted and angled his face closer to see better.
Far in the back, so far Peter is forced to lean his upper body over the edge, sat the blue cable. There was no way he could reach it unless he got real up and close to the tonnes of eight-legged inhabitants in there.
"There you go, kid! Just switch the cable, and we're done."
Tony sounded way too chippy for this situation. Easy for him to be, Peter thought bitterly. He didn't need to do a Fear Factor challenge.
"You suck." He didn't. Tony was the best, but not so much right now.
"Just do it, Pete. I'll make you mac and cheese with the fancy cheese when we're done."
Tony hoped the bribe would work. Standing there watching Peter have an existential crisis about spiders, still baffling, was full-on tedious.
"Don't stress me," Peter cried. He was already stressed. Who wouldn't?
Pinning the cable in his mind, Peter reluctantly hunched forward blindly. His hair skimmed the top och the hatch, sending shivers down his spine.
"Not a spider, not a spider, not a SPIDER!" The shriek he let out was neither dignified nor manly. Pulling back faster than Thor's lightning, Peter clawed at his neck, swiped at his hair, and cursed up a storm.
"You're fucking nuts! I resign!"
Similar to, but way faster than the tiny spiders, Peter turned and crawled, head first, down the shaft and out the hole in the elevator roof. Peter followed the ceiling out and away. Almost kicking Tony in the face in his haste to scatter past him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Pete?"
"Do it yourself," was all Tony heard before Peter disappeared around a corner. Leaving small dirt smudges on the otherwise white ceiling.
Well. That didn't go as planned.
Standing stunned in the new silence, Tony hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Hard.
Guess he had to find Natasha.
Wrangling a hissing, germaphobic assassin into a tight harness was, precisely, what he wanted to do on a Saturday morning.