chapter 4
When Peter first stirred, the steady beeping of machines around him comforted him, he’d slept through the night without nightmares. Then he remembered why, he’d basically been kidnapped. He sprung out of bed, tearing anything attached to him off in a frantic hurry until a soothing voice spoke. “In here you get privacy, I insisted that you’re a patient and should be treated with respect, but the second they know you’re awake, there’s nothing I can do to help.” The man spoke with such certainty that Peter just sat back down, he trusted this Doctor.
“Now, if you tell me the answers to what they’re going to ask you then they’ll hound you a little less later.” Peter turned his head to see the source of the voice. Banner, he’d have to do his best not to piss this guys off, Peter had no desire to see the Hulk up close and personal.
“Peter? I said can you tell me how you got your powers?”
Shit, Peter had to think, a reasonable excuse for this that wasn’t related to Hydra. He was glad he’d ripped the heart monitor off because his heart rate would be a sure giveaway that he’s scrambling for a lie. He remembered seeing in the papers a scandal from Oscorp, something about radioactive spiders, that whole lab had been burned to the ground after Norman’s death so they couldn’t fact check what he was about to say.
He angled his face down, going for meek or embarrassed before mumbling “Got bit by a spider.”
Dr Banner’s eyebrows shot up and Peter rushed to clarify that it wasn’t just like a garden spider.
“One from Oscorp, it said there was one more spider in the tank than there actually was, and i guess that free spider didn’t like me very much.”
“…I see,” came Dr Banners hesitant response, “and how long ago was that?”
Peter knew this, it was the same year Norman died, Peter knew that because it was him that was dispatched to kill him. Hydra had employed him to make the spiders for them to use as weapons but after that public scandal, Hydra just needed to end it. End him.
“2019.” Only after Peter had said it did he realise that that was only a couple months ago if you went off when 2019 ended. “February 2019.” There, that gave him over a year of having the powers, that was believable if he acted like he was just a really quick learner.
“Bruce is he awake?” Peter heard Stark’s intrusive voice from the other side of the curtain surrounding his bed. Before waiting for an answer, Tony ripped open the curtain, revealing the four of them who’d pursued him the first night he’d met them. Dr Banner gave him a sad smile before getting up and walking away.
“What’d you get your powers from?”
“When’d you get them?”
“Why are your eyes red?”
“Are you going to try and hurt people?”
All the voices overlapped until Peter couldn’t distinguish between them, and suddenly his clothes didn’t quite fit right and the beeping of machines was annoying and it was too hot and he kind of needed the toilet and it was all too much. He wouldn’t cry. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t curl in a ball and cover his ears.
By the time he uncovered his ears and stretched his limbs out, the curtain was back around his bed. He quickly wiped the moisture out of his eyes, he really hoped no one saw that. He had to decide how to play this. He wanted to be solemn and stoic and to tell them that they could stuff it if they wanted him to talk, but that wasn’t smart. The smart way to play this is compliant but scared, stubborn but out of his league. Yes, that was smart, that was the way that was least likely to get him arrested or found out as a Hyd- an ex-Hydra agent.
Padding his work shoes on the hard floor, he reached out and curled his fingers around the curtain and opened it. The Avengers were still there. No real sense of privacy.
“You can ask questions, but one at a time.” He barely had to force the vulnerability into his voice. Stark was the first one to react, he got up and stared at Peter before saying,
“Let’s go into the kitchen to talk, the hospital’s a bit of a downer.” He waited for everyone else to get up to follow him before shouting out, “no offence Banner!”
As they walked through the compound Peter started to feel a bit inferior, they were all in clean, expensive costumes or suits, and he was in shoes so uh, well-loved, that he could feel every stone he stepped on outside, trackies that were thin all over and ripped at the knees and a jumper that was frayed and singed and holey at the elbows. Good. He could use that sense of inferiority, they didn’t need to know that it was because of his clothes instead of just general nerves. Not that he was having a go at the sweet old man who ran the home, he just had a lot of kids to look after, so clothes got handed down, nothing wrong with that.
He answered all their questions, they believed his story about Oscorp, they even got dangerously close to sympathy when he talked about how his parents died. He just said the red eyes were a side affect of the bite and when they pushed it he acted desperate to get home.
When he was sitting in a limo owned by Stark, he was thinking about how well that went, how lucky he was for all that to be over now.
As he opened the door to his home, he heard the sweet, gullible old man who owned the home yell across to him, “Peter, I didn’t know you entered a competition to intern at Stark industries!”