Chapter Text
Peter was distracted. He usually was, to be honest, but it was of particular issue today.
“Eyes open, Underoos!” came a shout through the comms as Iron Man blasted an alien that had been winding back to slice Peter through the middle.
“Sorry, Mr. Stark!” Peter chirped back, jumping into the air and letting the easy, familiar motions of web-swinging take over.
Concentrate, Peter told himself. Concentrate. Fight those bad guys.
He landed a solid side kick to one of said bad guys, sending the squawking, scaly bird-bug-thing flying through the air.
Of everything that Peter had dreamt up over Star Wars marathons, he never could have imagined what an actual alien looked like. Or at least the ones he was currently fighting.
The creatures were long and lean, almost like a wiener dog. Unlike a wiener dog, they were covered in rough, reflective scales that could cut steel and jingled in a strong breeze. They also had no heads.
That was really the part that bothered Peter. The lack of faces. They were just long dragons with wagging dog tails and stumps for heads. A pair of fangs broke through the scales at the front of the creature, shiny and what Peter would describe as very, very stabby.
But if the aliens don’t have mouths, Peter thought, are the fangs really fangs? Maybe they’re claws? Or quills? Yeah. That’s it. They’re quills-
His thoughts were interrupted as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Dodging to the left, Peter narrowly missed one of the alien quills shooting for his heart.
Peter snorted, wondering if the alien had a good sense of humor. “Silly alien! Now you only have one quill left.”
Are they like bees? Peter’s mind drifted yet again. Do they die if they lose both of their quills?
But the teen didn’t have to wonder for long because a new quill grew from the missing space on the alien’s not-head stump, now back up to two quills.
“Ohh, so they’re like shark teeth,” Peter acknowledged, flipping away as two more aliens approached from his right. “Larry!” Peter dubbed the first newcomer. “Alexa! You came to join the party! Come on over; I promise there’ll be punch for everyone!”
The spider-hero dodged another three quills, one of which lodged itself in Larry’s side.
“Larry, no!” Peter cried in mock horror. “I’ll avenge you!”
And that was the plan. Take out the last two little guys and then meet up with Mr. Stark and the Avengers (the Avengers, he was hanging out with the Avengers) for shortcake or shrimp or something that started with a “sh-”. Peter had trouble understanding Mr. Stark over the comms as he swung his way from Queens to the battle.
But plans never went the way they were supposed to. Not with Parker luck. Not with Avengers-level threats.
Because right behind the fallen alien was a much bigger, much scarier version of the little faceless aliens. Its stump-head eclipsed the whole rooftop, and Peter felt a chill in the alien’s shadow. He staggered back.
Clearly, Peter had been fighting babies. Babies.
Because this alien didn’t have a pair of quills. It had thousands. Hundreds of thousands, more likely.
“Uhh… guys?” Peter spoke over the comms. “There’s a really big alien over by thirty-fourth, and –”
There was no comprehensible response as Peter began to swing away from the giant creature. He could hear some battle cries and a grunt or two but no real words.
Peter didn’t need to glance back to know he was in trouble. A thousand little spikes screaming “DANGER DANGER DANGER” rang in his head. Peter twisted his body this way and that, but no matter how acrobatic he was, there was no physical way he could avoid all 314,992 quills shooting his direction, all at the same time.
Peter’s webs missed the streetlight he was aiming for, and he fell into the road, feeling the burn of every quill in his body. His back, his legs, his neck – they seemed to have hit everywhere. His arms were the worst, having come up to protect his face during the assault.
“Guys,” Peter squeaked over the comms, now desperate for assistance. He could deal with dragon-dogs. But actual dragons were a little above his paygrade.
“Pete, kind of in the middle of something right now,” Mr. Stark answered hurriedly, voice tense.
“Thirty-fourth and second,” Peter gasped, trying to regain his footing. “Big guy. Big, big guy.”
An ear-piercing roar boomed over the comms. “I am at your service, Man of Spiders!”
And then lightning struck the ground behind Peter, singeing his suit and absolutely decimating the alien looming over him.
Peter breathed a sigh of relief, rising to his feet. The worst of it was over. Probably. Now all he had to do was-
The world was pulled out from under Peter’s feet, and his vision fell to darkness.
---
A loud crack echoed over the comms. Tony felt the knot of unease in his chest loosen. Thor had arrived, which meant this party was going to be over in two minutes, max.
An alien launched itself at Tony, and he responded with a quick laser blast to the face. He barely heard Thor’s warning – barely got out of the way – before lighting struck the horde of demon-dragons in front of him. The storm echoed throughout the city, flashes of light taking out every last ‘roided-out alien.
“Point Break,” Tony greeted. “Nice to see you’re still around.”
“Midguard is not my only responsibility, Stark,” Thor’s voice boomed. “I have a duty to Asguard as well.”
“Right,” the mechanic dismissed. “Just glad to see you haven’t forgotten about us, that’s all.”
“I am a god. I do not forget things.”
“Funny. That’s not what you said when you forgot my birthday last week-”
“Shut up, Clint,” Natasha groaned, ending the rapidly declining conversation.
“Debrief at the Tower in thirty,” Steve commanded, and the comms went silent.
Tony didn’t wait around. The clean-up crew would take care of the charred dragon meat. He headed straight to the Tower, flipping over to a private channel as he did so.
“Kid, you alright?”
FRIDAY made a beeping sound that sent Tony’s heart racing.
“Kid?” Tony repeated.
Another negatory beep.
“FRIDAY?”
“The Spider-Man suit is offline.”
Okay. That was okay. No need to panic. Peter had probably unmasked. He was probably blending back in with the public.
Tony gave it another thirty second before he spoke again. “FRIDAY, call Peter Parker.”
He heard the appropriate ringing tones but was left with only the generic message from a phone without a voicemail.
“Of course the kid wouldn’t set up a voicemail,” Tony muttered bitterly. He waited another twenty seconds before calling again to the same results.
By the time Tony touched down on the landing pad of Avengers Tower, he’d called Peter no less than a dozen times and attempted to reconnect with the Spider-Man suit eight times.
But there was never a response.
Tony stepped out of his suit, already dialing Happy.
“Tony?”
“Hey, Hap.” Tony was doing everything in his power to drain the panic from his voice. Peter didn’t play phone tag. He didn’t. At least not with Tony Stark. “You haven’t heard from the kid in the last hour, have you?”
“I-” Happy’s voice cut out for a moment, like he tripped over something or lost his train of thought. “I saw him on TV, but I haven’t gotten any of his texts or messages like he usually sends, if that’s what you mean.”
“Hmm.” The genius wasn’t thrilled with that answer. Happy was (technically, anyway), the liaison between Spider-Man and the Avengers. Or, just Iron Man, he supposed, because most of the Avengers weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of Spider-Man helping out in the first place.
“I’ll try to get in contact with him,” Happy offered.
“Let me know the second you hear anything,” Tony ordered, unable to keep from sounding a bit too desperate.
As he made his way to debriefing, Tony considered calling Pepper. Not that she would know where Peter was, but she was pretty good in these situations. Tony’s voice of reason. But she was busy, he knew. Off doing business in the UK. He couldn’t bother her right now, especially when Tony was probably panicked over nothing. Peter’s phone could’ve died. Or maybe he was on the subway towards the Tower.
Yeah, that was probably it. Tony was worried over nothing.
---
Waking up, to Peter, was one of the worst feelings in the world. The buzzing, insistent alarm, the threat of another school day ahead of him, the fuzziness in his head – it all sucked.
And that was when he woke up at home in his own bed.
So when Peter’s consciousness returned to something poking his cheek over and over again and burning stab wounds all over his body, he wasn’t exactly thrilled.
“Are you awake now?”
The voice was small and soft, and the person it came from matched the aesthetic. A civilian wrapped in a brown peacoat was leaning over Peter, gray eyes wide with concern. The scene behind her contrasted starkly – a grungy brick alley filled with dumpsters and litter.
The young hero managed to sit up, feeling the ache of the previous battle and noting a whole lot of quills sticking out of his suit. Those would be a blast to remove later.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m up.” Peter tried to say this with as much confidence as possible, but his words came out shaky at best.
“Maybe you should lay down for a bit,” the woman suggested, shifting away from Peter now that she knew he was conscious and… dangerous? Was she afraid of him? “That car hit ya pretty good.” She laughed nervously.
“Car…?” Peter let himself slump back down again. “What car?”
“The car,” the woman repeated, glancing towards the street. “Remember? You were in the street, and a car hit you. The driver sped off, but I remember the license plate,” she assured Peter. “AGB-1703,” she proclaimed with confidence. Then her triumphant smile drooped. “Or was it 7310? Maybe 1073?”
“It’s okay,” Peter promised, waving an absent hand. “Doesn’t matter.” He sat up again, feeling a bit more with it now that he’d had time to come around. “Thank you for helping me,” he told the woman. “I’m good now. You can go back to… whatever you were doing.”
The woman grimaced. “I don’t think you’re good. You did get hit by a car. And what are those…?” She trailed off as she reached for a quill wedged in Peter’s right thigh.
“Nothing!” he shouted quickly, brushing her hands away. He didn’t want anyone touching any quills until he found the Avengers. The woman jumped back as if she’d been burned. She was definitely scared of him.
“It’s nothing,” Peter repeated, far calmer this time. “I… heal fast. Don’t worry about it.”
The woman raised a wary eyebrow but pushed no further. “Okay, Spider-Man. Um… look both ways next time.” And in the blink of an eye, she was gone, off to wherever she’d been off to in the first place.
As for the superhero, he dragged himself up on his feet, trying to assess the situation. He wasn’t sure where the other Avengers had gone. He wasn’t sure of anything, really. All he knew was that he could not stay. The police or reporters or the clean-up crew were going to show up any minute, and Peter was in no condition to give a statement.
The hero staggered down the pavement, bracing himself against the brick wall of the alley. Peter felt himself begin to slide along the wall, arms so weak that he couldn’t even hold himself up for longer than a few seconds. In a move of desperation, Peter let himself go sticky, hand now glued to the wall.
“Mr. Stark?” Peter choked through the comms, but he couldn’t hear a thing in response. Not even static.
“Karen?” the boy tried. Still, no response. She must have broken in the hit-and-run.
Spider-Man – Peter – was all alone. God knows he couldn’t go to May. May was a nurse, but if she saw the damage on her nephew, she’d freak out, and when May freaked out, Peter freaked out.
And she didn’t even know he was Spider-Man. May simply wasn’t an option.
But who did that leave?
Peter could go to Avengers Tower. That’s probably where everyone else had gone anyway.
But Peter wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it that far. He was tired, and his knees were beginning to buckle. He needed somewhere closer.
And then it dawned on him. Ned. He could crash with Ned for the night.
Duh. Should’ve thought of that one earlier.
Peter shot a web to the nearest roof and began the trip to his best friend’s house.
---
Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Tony nearly launched himself from his seat at the interruption from his nervous pen-tapping. He didn’t miss the way Nat smiled when she saw his startled expression.
But the genius composed himself quickly. “Sorry, I don’t give out my thoughts for anything under a grand.”
Natasha shrugged, taking the seat beside him. “Fine.”
Well. She gave up without much fight. Odd.
Tony leaned back in his seat, letting the nervous tic shift from his fingers to his foot. There was still sixteen minutes before debriefing began. Hell, he and Natasha were the only ones there. But he couldn’t dismiss that sinking feeling.
“Worried about the Spider-Kid?”
The mechanic startled again. “What do you mean?”
How does she know? he wondered frantically.
“Spider-Man,” Nat reiterated. “He’s what you’re worried about, right?”
“No,” Tony lied.
The spy made a noise that made it quite clear that she did not believe him.
Tony elected to ignore her. It was fine. He was fine. There were still fifteen more minutes for Peter to show up.
But the later it got and the more Avengers there were in the room, the more anxious Tony felt. By the time debriefing officially began, Peter was still missing.
Steve started without him.
No surprise, of course. Spider-Man was a new addition. Technically, he wasn’t even an Avenger. Tony had offered Peter a spot on the team, but ultimately, the kid declined, and Tony respected the decision to stay close to the ground. In fact, he preferred that Peter didn’t get too caught up in Avengers stuff.
Because of this exact thing. This exact thing that was going on this very minute.
The worry.
Peter was missing, and Tony didn’t know if he was okay. At least with Spider-Manning around Queens, Peter didn’t run the risk of getting impaled by a dragon-alien.
Alien-dragon. Dralien?
Not important.
Tony left the meeting after two minutes and thirty-six seconds to call Peter again.
No response.
He called Happy again.
No news.
Tony left for his lab, checking the kid’s trackers. There were the ones on backpacks five and six, but both of those got lost to the Manhattan sanitation department when Peter webbed them above open dumpsters, only for the backpacks to fall in when the webbing dissolved two hours later.
Then there was the tracker on the suit. Also not helpful – the suit’s tracker went completely dark.
And that was when Tony knew that Peter wasn’t just late or skipping debriefing. If the Spider-Man suit was not only inactive but geographically gone – like, missing-from-the-Earth type of gone – then it had to be damaged. Seriously damaged.
Which meant Peter was not okay.
His last tracker, hidden within Peter’s phone, was Tony’s last hope.
A bright red dot lit up over Peter’s apartment building.
Tony considered this. Peter was at home? He supposed that wasn’t completely unheard of – if Peter was hurt, he probably would want to go home and get patched up – but it still seemed off. There was a med bay in the Tower. The Tower, which was closer to the battle than Peter’s apartment.
And let’s be honest – had the kid even brought his phone with him to the fight? It’s not like he had pockets on that suit or anything. Maybe Peter just left the phone in his apartment before heading out for patrol.
It was a lead – likely a false lead – but could Tony afford to ignore it?
Could he afford to waste time chasing a dead end?
“FRIDAY, I want footage from street cams at thirty-fourth and second from 21:00 to 22:00.”
FRIDAY was happy to oblige, pausing only for a moment before grainy footage of a lamp-lit intersection popped up on Tony’s monitor. The videos, taken from varying angles, showed the grisly scene that happened on the other end of the comms. Sped up, it revealed one of the larger aliens in hot pursuit of Spider-Man (tiny and barely visible over the poor video quality). The kid was swinging away from the alien, but the alien must have done something that Tony missed, because suddenly, the kid dropped to the pavement. Peter had just fallen.
A twinge of guilt struck him. Peter had sounded pretty scared over the comms when this took place. And yeah, Tony had been a bit swamped when the kid asked for help.
But still. The video wasn’t doing anything for Tony’s guilt complex.
The footage shorted out briefly, no doubt due to Thor’s impromptu thunderstorm. When the picture returned, it was just in time for Tony to watch someone drag the kid (Limp as a rag doll, Tony noted worriedly) off the street and out of view.
“FRIDAY,” Tony began, but FRIDAY worked faster than he could speak. The camera angles changed, and Peter was on his feet. Then he turned and swung away from the battle.
That was enough for Tony. He couldn’t tell how injured Peter was, but any injury at all was too much.
Tony was in his suit and headed east within thirty seconds, FRIDAY guiding him with street camera footage showing Peter’s route through the city.
“I’ll be there soon, kid.”