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Peter Benjamin Parker. Peter Benjamin Parker. He’d only get the full name treatment when he really messed up, and it was worse when Ben was around and he had to say his own name in the midst of trying to give his nephew a talking-to. Peter misses it. Misses the way Ben’s face would screw up when he’d hit the Benjamin, how he’d always cool off a little bit. He’d smile, laugh and stumble over whatever he’d be trying to say. Peter misses it. He misses him.
May does it now too, of course, and has for years, and will continue to well past Peter becoming a middle-aged married adult with children of his own. She does it in front of MJ now and Peter thinks that’s worse, and his face burns and that makes MJ laugh. Nothing can back May down once she gets into Peter Benjamin Parker mode. He’s been at MIT for a year now and he’s been Spider-Man for way longer and she still whips out Peter Benjamin Parker when he’s crossed her little invisible lines. It isn’t his fault she’s constantly moving the goal posts. He’s gonna almost die sometimes and at this point he doesn’t think it warrants the chiding or the needling or the stern looks. It’s just a fact of their lives. Nobody likes it. He doesn’t like it! But it just is.
Tony has pulled the full name out exactly twice. Once, when he gave him the heart attack, and twice, when Peter was seconds away from actual death, and Tony followed it with one of the hardest slaps Peter’s ever felt. Iron hand and all. It staved off unconsciousness, so Peter wasn’t mad. At least not right then.
He feels like he needs a Peter Benjamin Parker right now.
He takes another step and falls. He tries not to, and he reaches out for the wall, but he misjudges how close the wall is to him and he falls even harder. There’s a puddle and he slips in that and crashes against the edge of the nearest dumpster.
“I don’t know why I do anything,” he mutters to himself.
It’s still raining, and he’s still on the roof of this power plant or whatever the hell this is, and he can hear the last couple guys running away at least a mile down the road. His head is a million pounds, and he tries to get up and he missteps and falls again.
He lays down completely, staring up at the stormy sky through busted lenses. He’d gotten the call that there were gunshots and other kinds of weapons going off on Roosevelt Island, and civilians in danger, so he swung over there. It was a pretty normal fight for a little while. And then he heard more gunshots, other gunshots, and he heard someone yelling and more of a skirmish and then there was a moment where he just barely dodged getting pancaked by some thousand-pound piece of equipment and he barely escaped the blast of an energy weapon and then he felt something sharp and there was a fog and—
“Peter,” Karen says. “There are traces of a drug in your system that I cannot define.”
“Well, am I dying?” Peter asks, and he stumbles to his feet.
“Not currently, though the situation can change.”
“That’s great,” Peter says. “That’s what I love to hear.”
He knows he’s got something in his system, because he can’t see straight and his thoughts are all over the place, worse than usual, and he can barely stay upright without nearly plummeting back to the ground.
“Daredevil is in pursuit of the final two marked enemies,” Karen says.
“Daredevil?” Peter asks, narrowing his eyes. Thunder rumbles off in the distance, and his map comes up on his HUD.
“You were fighting alongside him,” Karen says. “The police have been dispatched. It was the last thing I did before your communications were knocked out. You also broke your cell phone.”
“Nice,” Peter says, looking at all the guys that are knocked out around the facility. He sees one marked with green instead of red, and he starts heading off in that direction. He walks in a zig-zag line and he holds out his arms for balance. “Still not dying?”
“Still not dying,” Karen says. “But I recommend immediately heading for the compound’s medical facilities.”
“Who is this green guy?” Peter asks. He weaves around the carnage they left behind, and the smoking reactor, and the blown open doors. He takes two steps back into the facility and drops facedown onto the ground because he once again misjudged how close he was to the ground. He crawls for a second, groaning.
“The unconscious person marked safe to interact with is Frank Castle, the Punisher, who arrived to assist you, with Daredevil. Daredevil left in pursuit—”
“What?” Peter asks, still crawling. He’s been Spider-Man for years now and he hasn’t interacted with Castle yet. He almost did, last Thanksgiving, when he ran to a call that claimed the Punisher was getting overwhelmed by that Heat Stroke gang he and Daredevil had been working on around that time. Peter decided to cross hero lines to help them, but then one of the idiot guys must have heard Spider-Man was coming and he hit him with a semi-truck. And then Peter had to fight that guy and the guys he brought with him and by the time he was finished with that, it was all over.
They all have their separate little teams, and that’s fine, it’s whatever, it’s okay. They help each other if they really need it, and Peter doesn’t get that, because he’s willing to help everybody all the time. He’s helped Daredevil more than once.
And he wonders what made them show up here, today.
He realizes he’s crawling on his back like a crab.
“Karen, am I dying yet or no?” Peter asks, trying to get up, slipping and hitting the wall and sliding up it to his feet again.
“No, you are not.”
“I miss the days when you’d get drugged and you’d feel like you were drunk, that was way better, I liked that way more—”
“You just had an experience like that last week,” Karen says.
Peter huffs, and slides along the wall until he’s right in front of the green dot on the map, and then he turns on his night vision and sees Frank Castle splayed out on the ground in the corner. There’s also a dead—a dead body—
“Did he kill this guy?” Peter asks, and his knee buckles and he falls again.
“I do not have a play by play of all shots fired.”
“Well, if he died from a gunshot, it wasn’t me,” Peter says, crawling over to Frank. His vision tilts and blurs and he blinks, trying to adjust the lenses. The broken pattern mimics itself and splays across his eyes in a long, stamped line. He doesn’t think about the dead guy. He turns his back and winces and purposefully does not think about him. The purposefulness of it makes him think of him even more. He knows those guys would have killed him, no questions asked. They were trying to. They weren’t angels. And yet his heart lurches and sinks with it, and he shakes his head so much that he feels like his brain is gonna fall out of his nose.
He tries to focus on Frank. “Hey,” he yells, scooting up alongside him. He’s never been this close to him before. A chord of panic rings out in Peter’s head for a second, and he feels for a pulse in Frank’s neck.
“He is alive,” Karen says.
“Okay, good,” Peter breathes. “Frank! Frank Castle, hey! Wake up, man. Wake—he’s totally knocked out.”
“I cannot call out to get you a ride,” Karen says.
“That’s fine,” Peter says. He smacks Frank’s face a few times, and the stars in his eyes aren’t from being this close to another hero he has yet to meet, whether or not that hero has absolutely no problem killing people. The stars in his eyes are cascading across his vision like a flock of birds. “You’re sure I’m not dying?” Peter asks.
“You are not dying,” Karen says. “I still cannot detect the drug you have been dosed with. It looks like a street concoction.”
“Okay…” Peter breathes, laying there like a slug for a second, narrowing his eyes. He hopes he hasn’t been given cocaine. That would be really bad. But who would just give away their cocaine? It doesn’t make any sense. But he can hear May yelling you took cocaine?! even though he’s pretty sure he didn’t take cocaine, and he didn’t take anything, whether it was cocaine or not.
“Not cocaine,” he whispers. “Not cocaine.”
He pats Frank on the chest. He tries to stand up. For a minute he’s just wiggling on the floor. And then he slams his forehead against the wall, and he slides up the wall with his head. And then he’s standing, precariously, and he’s a little irritated at himself because now he’s further away from Frank.
“Come on,” he breathes, and he hits his own forehead a couple times.
He is a ship at sea. He’s the ship inside the bottle on the mantle that Ben had since before Peter was born. He can feel his sails in the wind. And they’re full of holes and they’re raggedy and on fire.
He closes his eyes, and he leans down, and he grabs Frank under his arms.
“Just do it fast,” he chants to himself, the whole world twisting and turning and his knees threatening to give out again. “Just do it fast.”
He grabs Frank and hoists him up and then the two of them are tumbling backwards with the inertia of it.
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa—”
They both hit the wall, and Peter winces, hearing Frank’s head take the brunt of the hit, and he shakes his own head and gets a better grip on him, adjusting him over his shoulder.
A gun falls off of him and clatters to the ground. Peter stands there, in a horse stance, and he stares at it like it’s going to shoot him all on its own.
“I’m just gonna leave that there,” Peter says, patting Frank’s back. “You can come back and get it later.”
Each step is like molasses. Like he’s in quicksand, except he’s not sinking. He’s moving like a robot, anticipating the swinging, because he’s barely got a hold of Frank now, and if he drops him, that’s it. He can’t be the guy that kills the Punisher. It wouldn’t even make sense. He doesn’t approve of Frank killing people but he’s not gonna start lecturing him because he knows his history and he gets it even if he doesn’t get it, even if he might not react in the same way. But he can’t kill him! Even by accident. He has to be better.
Peter gets outside after what feels like forty-seven hours, and his brain is a film reel with burns through it and it’s Daredevil doing whatever he’s doing and a bunch of outtakes of him dropping Frank out of the sky and Tony at the compound having no prior knowledge of Peter’s imminent arrival because Karen’s communication got knocked out and he broke his stupid phone again.
“Wait, wait wait,” Peter says, to himself, he guesses. “Brain power.”
He holds Frank with one hand, and with the other, he webs him to his shoulder and torso. He webs his arm around Frank’s body, too, and Karen puts a little exclamation mark on his display.
“What?” Peter asks, annoyed, because he felt like the decision he just made was a smart decision.
“Will you be able to remove your hand from the webbing if you need to use it while swinging?” Karen asks.
Peter stares straight ahead, at the stormy sky. He’s proud of himself for currently being upright. “Shouldn’t you know that?”
“I am getting a fifty-fifty split.”
Peter narrows his eyes. The sky tears itself open and then there are about seven skies in the sky. He sighs. He needs to get to the compound. He thinks about finding a payphone or asking somebody to use their cell, but he’s webbed to Frank Castle and he doesn’t know if he even sounds normal outside of his own head and maybe Karen has been telling him he’s dying this whole time and he’s been interpreting her as saying he’s not.
He sighs. He’s got a good hold of Frank, he thinks, and they’re both still breathing.
He starts to run, looking for a good jumping off point where he can begin his swing back to the compound.
His own feet get tangled up in each other and he topples to the ground. Frank is still firmly webbed to him, and Peter rolls over him like he’s a speedbump in the street.
“Oh my God,” Peter breathes, still stumbling, trying to push himself back to his feet. “I need autopilot. I need autopilot for my own body.”
~
Tony is asleep when it happens.
He’s in bed alone. He knows where Pepper is, because she and May had a wine night. They were in the living room down the hall, and he fell asleep to their laughter. Last he knew, Peter was patrolling. Tony worries about him, and how much he still puts into Spider-Man even though he’s practically killing himself at school. He’s always got a full plate, and somehow, he just comes back with more plates. Tony knows he’s not his blood, but he reminds him of himself. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes he would have set a better example for the kid, but he’s not a kid anymore.
He's still a young person, sure, of course, and Tony is constantly reminded of that in different ways. How much he’s capable of. How hurt he can get. But Tony has essentially given up trying to get Peter to put himself first. Because he is like him, and he won’t do that. It’s everything and everyone else, and then himself at the end of the day. If he has time.
Tony wakes up out of a blistering dream, some alternate reality where he stepped left when he should have stepped right, and he can still feel the burns and the way his body was giving out and the faces of everyone surrounding him. He narrows his eyes at the ceiling and tries to blink it all away.
He pads out into the living room, and Pepper and May are still out there. Pepper is stretched out on the couch, passed out, and May is sleeping in the easy chair, her face smashed into the terrier pillow. Their empty glasses are sitting on the table, in a perpetual state of cheers.
Tony tells himself he’s just checking on things. Sam and Bucky are on a mission in London, and he knows that, even though they refused to tell him the location. They’re always afraid he’s gonna just show up. Well, tough shit. If they need help, he’s showing up. He’s not an old man yet. He can still get into the suit.
He always worries about Thor, because Thor is always doing something, and half the time it feels like he gets into more shit than Peter does. But when Tony sits down in his work room and brings up everybody’s locations, Thor is still in Norway, and Bruce is still with him. Bucky and Sam haven’t sent any alerts, and Friday hasn’t given him any covert ones.
But Peter’s fallen off the map.
“Okay, Friday, where is he?” Tony asks. “Did he head back to Cambridge without telling anybody? Because May’s gonna be pissed.”
“Which he are you referring to?” Friday asks.
Tony narrows his eyes. “C’mon, Fri, context clues. The young one. Petey Pie.”
“Peter’s last known location was at a power plant on Roosevelt Island,” Friday says. “He was responding to a call pertaining to gunshots and energy weapons. He had arrived to secure the scene before my connection to Karen was severed.”
Tony clicks his tongue, his heartbeat wavering in his ears. He hears the double beats more, when Peter’s in trouble. The stuttering and the start-stops.
But he doesn’t need to get ahead of himself. He doesn’t know if Peter’s in trouble. As much as they try to keep his equipment perfect, it never winds up working out for them.
“Search Twitter for Spider-Man,” Tony says.
“Searching X—”
“No, no, don’t call it that,” Tony says. “We call it Twitter. That’s its name.”
“Searching Twitter for Spider-Man.”
It’s a bunch of bullshit for the first couple of scrolls, which is par for the course lately, with that goddamn website. Someone selling Spider-Man t-shirts. The same tweet about Spider-Man saving someone from the Hudson coming from about twelve different accounts, verbatim. And then, a lone tweet, sent out by someone with an Iron Man mask for their icon.
Did anyone else see that? Was that spider-man swinging across the roosevelt trams with might-be the punisher webbed to his shoulder? I’m alone & had a couple drinks so someone please advise
Tony stares at it. It’s from about twenty minutes ago. No one has replied, at least not yet.
“Friday, did you try Peter’s cell phone when you couldn’t connect to Karen?” Tony asks.
“Yes, but it didn’t work.”
Tony cracks his jaw. And before he can even have another thought, he hears something slam against the side of the building. He immediately narrows his eyes, standing up and staring at the wall. He can’t see anything through the window.
“Friday—”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“What do you mean yes that’s him?” Tony asks, getting up. He moves back and forth for a second like he’s doing the fucking shuffle, and he realizes he doesn’t know where to go. “What’s him? Where?”
“Peter has crashed against the side of the building and is making his way towards the med bay, on the outside of the building. He is carrying the Punisher, Frank Castle, with him. From my current scans, it looks like he has ingested the street drug called superhero coup which has recently become very common during—”
“Jesus Christ,” Tony breathes, and now he’s got a destination, nearly tripping on his own feet as he heads for the med bay. “Where are we on the antidote for that? Goddamnit, he’s avoided it so well—”
“We are still weeks away. It won’t kill him—”
“I know that,” Tony says, wheeling out into the hallway. “Still. Can you open a window for him? Why’s he got Castle with him?”
Tony hears a big bang and a bunch of shit falling. He narrows his eyes, looking up as he heads for the back stairwell. “Why’s he sound like the Hulk?”
“The drug is most likely inhibiting his motor functions. Depending on how long ago he consumed it, he probably has another three to four hours of effects before they begin to wear off.”
“Okay,” Tony says, storming up the stairs. “I need you to prioritize the antidote. Number one, most important, I want it done by the end of the week, and I’ll be on it tomorrow. I’m assuming he’s inside?”
“He’s inside,” Friday says, her voice following him up the corridor. “But the window is broken.”
Tony throws his hands up. “Did you open it for him like I asked?”
“Yes,” Friday says. “And it is still broken.”
Tony makes something resembling a growling sound, finally reaching the next floor. He reaches the door, scans in, and busts inside.
Peter is half standing up, half sliding to the ground. He’s got his arms around Frank Castle, and he’s trying to—Tony can’t tell what the hell he’s trying to do.
“Peter,” Tony says, rushing up alongside him, avoiding the broken glass.
“Hey!” Peter says, turning around and looking at him. Both of his eye lenses are cracked, and the suit is more ripped up than he’s seen it for a while. “Hey. Hey. I webbed myself to. I mean. I webbed him to me because my arms aren’t working right. It’s fine. Can you get those Spider-Man scissors? The ones for when I’ve done something I shouldn’t have done.”
Tony has a lot to say, but it’s not the time. He just yanks Peter’s mask off of his head. And Peter has the nerve to smile at him.
“You got hit with that hero drug that we haven’t cracked yet,” Tony says, rushing over to the cabinet where they keep all the specific tools they need to deal with the peculiarities of each individual to come through this med bay. He grabs the scissors from the Peter section.
Peter grunts, still trying to maneuver Castle over to the closest bed. “There’s no cocaine in it, right? We would already know if it included cocaine, right?”
“Why are you worrying about that?” Tony asks, returning to his side. He starts cutting away at the webs. “You’re supposed to be able to get out of your own webs. You told me that before. In fact, you promised that.”
“I lie to you sometimes.”
Tony glares at him.
“Not a lot!” Peter insists, and he’s still trying to get Castle onto the bed, moving around like a fucking jello mold while Tony tries to separate them. “The webs, it just—it depends on the situation—are you sure there’s no cocaine?”
“Peter,” Tony says, but the next cut does the trick, and Castle falls away. Peter had managed to get one of his legs onto the bed, but it’s not enough, and he slams to the ground with a couple horrible sounding thunks.
Tony grits his teeth. “Friday?”
“You have not done him further damage, but if you continue to drop him on the floor—”
“We’re not gonna continue—Peter—”
“Okay okay okay, but just so you know, I’m a jellyfish right now, in terms of like, limbs,” Peter says, and he moves around so he’s behind Castle’s head. Tony gets his feet, putting his all into hauling the man up and into the bed. Castle groans a little bit once they’ve got him settled, but he doesn’t wake up. Peter and Tony stand there, bracing their hands on the side of the bed and breathing hard, and Peter looks at him.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hey,” Tony says, shaking his head. “Friday, get a more in-depth scan going. Are Cho and the nurses coming in?”
“Doctor Cho is still on her vacation in the Rocky Mountains,” Friday says, and Tony tilts his head. “But I paged the upper-level nurses. She will consult if necessary.”
“She deserves a vacation,” Peter says.
“Yeah,” Tony says, still trying to catch his breath. “With all we put her through.”
Peter nods, and nods and nods, the nods becoming more drawn out and forward progressing. Tony looks at him, bracing his hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“Maybe you should lay down.”
“As long as it’s not cocaine.”
“Peter.”
Peter gives Tony finger guns. He winks, or he attempts to, both eyes opening and closing like there’s too much light. And then he claps Tony on the shoulder, and he crumples, folding in on top of himself.
“Jesus Christ,” Tony breathes, catching him around the middle before he even processes what’s happening. He juggles him in his arms for a second, but it’s a lot easier to hold him than it is to try and balance even one of Frank Castle’s legs. And Tony has, unfortunately, gotten a lot of practice catching Peter when he falls. “Okay, bud. Okay. Gotcha, gotcha, I’ve gotcha. Friday?”
“These are simply the effects of the drug running its course,” Friday says. Tony hoists Peter up, carrying him over to the nearest bed, next to where Castle is laying. “He has multiple lacerations and a concussion, and a sprained ankle, but nothing life threatening. The drug has yet to be improved to cause life-threatening damage, only debilitating the user’s motor functions to cause them to debilitate themselves.”
“Yeah, we need to get on it before it gets any worse,” he says. He leans over Peter, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and he glances up. “You haven’t detected any cocaine in his system, right? Or in the drug?”
“No traces of cocaine.”
“Okay,” Tony says, clearing his throat. “Just making sure.”
Tony patches Peter up as best he can before the Nurses In the Know get there, aka the nurses that are aware of Peter’s identity and have been sworn to secrecy. He leaves messages on May’s phone, so she knows what’s going on when she wakes up, and he checks on everyone else just to make sure there won’t be any other emergencies while he’s tending to Peter.
Castle wakes up before Peter does, and Tony rolls his chair over there.
“We did not drop you,” Tony says, when Castle’s eyes land on him.
“Stark.”
“We didn’t drop you,” Tony says, pointing at him. “If anybody says that, even if it’s an AI that lives in this building, it isn’t true.”
Castle scoffs, reaching up and rubbing his hand across his forehead. “How’d I get here? Did little Red swing me here?”
“Little Red?” Tony asks.
“Spidey,” Castle says. “Mini version of Red—Daredevil. And where’s he? Christ, I can never keep up with him. Flipping all over the goddamn place.”
“Daredevil hasn’t checked in, but I haven’t seen anything that sounds like he got himself into more trouble,” Tony says, standing up and crossing his arms over his chest. “Twitter is good for random updates. People are always watching and spying and being too interested.”
“He took off to follow the guys that were trying to escape,” Castle says. “Last I knew. Don’t know when the hell I got knocked out. They were using these weapons that were bouncing people off the damn walls—”
“Yeah,” Tony says, “things have been changing, recently, it’s gotten a little more like the wild west since we reset everything, but I think we’re doing a good job tamping down on—”
Castle moves his hand and meets Tony’s eyes. “They were trying to get Spidey,” he says. Tony raises his eyebrows at him, and Castle nods. “Yeah. Red and I heard it, on another channel, the whole damn thing was a ruse to get him over there. So we followed, because we knew he’d go. They said there were civilians trapped in the crossfire, that already had Ma—Daredevil all up in arms before I switched over and heard they were trying to lure the kid in.”
Tony narrows his eyes, and Castle rolls his.
“Come on. I don’t know his name but I know he’s twelve years old.”
“He’s not twelve, and strangely enough, he’s a full-grown adult—”
“He’s right there, too,” Castle says, pointing. “Now I know what he looks like.”
Tony takes a step towards the wall to block his view, and Castle actually laughs.
“Yeah, no, no, I saw him. I know what he looks like. C’mon, Stark, I know we aren’t friendly but I’m not one of these assholes. I’m—Christ, I’m aligned with Daredevil, holiest of holies, he’s probably sitting in whatever precinct right now making sure the guys he ran down are getting enough water—”
Tony sighs, running his hand through his hair. “Thank you for following him. Trying to help.”
“Yeah, I know you’re semi-retired,” Castle says, and he tries to sit up. Tony leans in to help him, and Castle makes a noise like he doesn’t want the help, but he doesn’t push him away.
Tony’s face burns. “But I still try to keep an eye on him. As much as I can.”
Castle couldn’t possibly understand the amount of shit the two of them have been through. Since Tony found him, since the Vulture incident, since the world fucking ended and Peter disintegrated and it took two years to get everybody back. Tony almost died. He was dead, for three minutes, supposedly. Rhodey likes to remind him of that, when he gets in too deep. They all want him on the sidelines, now, because he died once and he could die again and not come back this time. Peter has dealt with such horrors that Tony was sure he’d die just from hearing about them. He still worries that doctor could escape from prison. He still worries the people who blew up the shelter could come back and kidnap Peter again. He worries about every step he takes, and still, Peter doesn’t want him to help him. They’ve had knockdown dragout fights about him showing up as Iron Man for an assist. Tony’s been on the other side of Peter’s silent treatment because he showed up to help. I only want to see Iron Man helping me if the world is ending. And the rest of them say it too. It’s for his own good, they say. It’s to keep him alive, they say, because they want him to stay alive. But he wants them to stay alive, too, shit. He knows he’d blame himself for the rest of his life if anything happened to any one of them and he’d stayed rooted to the couch when he heard about it.
Tony doesn’t realize that Castle is watching him closely, with a particular look on his face.
“I get you,” he says, quietly, in a softer tone than he’s been partial to so far. “I get you.” And Tony meets his eyes, and he doesn’t say anything else, but he understands that maybe he does get him. Tony knows a little bit about Frank Castle, about his past, that whole insane trial and everything that came after, all the way up until the government stopped chasing him and forgave everything.
Okay, maybe he knows more than he thinks.
“He’s a good kid,” Castle says, motioning towards Peter with his chin. “He coulda left me there.”
“He’d never do that,” Tony says. “He gets irritated that you and Daredevil are always on your own little team and won’t play with others.”
Castle rolls his eyes at that, trying to sit up even more. “No, there ain’t no team, there’s not a team, I just know Red and he knows me, that’s the only reason—half the time it’s him sticking to me like glue, running after me terrified—”
Tony laughs, shaking his head.
“But hey,” he says, and he reaches out and smacks Tony’s arm with the back of his hand. “How is he? Spidey. What’s going on?”
“That superhero drug whoever concocted,” Tony says, blowing out a breath. There’s clear recognition on Castle’s face, and he shakes his head.
“I gotta call Matt—Daredevil—fuck, you didn’t hear that. You didn’t hear that.”
“Nope,” Tony says, sitting down again and rolling over to check on Peter. “I didn’t hear anything.”
~
Peter wakes up with a headache that’s throbbing so intensely that he feels like his head is going to fall off his shoulders. He hears voices, and he keeps his eyes shut for a minute, because the light outside his eyelids feels like it has teeth.
He feels a hand on his arm.
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m encouraging killing,” May’s voice says. “But if someone looks at Peter wrong, well, I start getting testy. If I could find the men who took him last winter, I’d need one of your guns.”
Peter hears two men laughing, and then he sits up immediately, like rising from the dead.
They all go quiet. May on his left, Tony on a rolling chair beside her, and then Frank Castle in the bed where Peter remembers—attempting to put him. All three of them have mugs of something, like they’re in the middle of a lunch get together.
“Frank,” Peter says, fast. “Are you okay?”
Frank’s eyes narrow a little bit, like that’s not what he was expecting Peter to say when he woke up. “Yeah, Spidey, I’m alright. Thanks for not leaving me there. If I would have left it up to Daredevil I’d probably still be there.”
“Of course,” Peter says, and he looks back and forth between Tony and May. He realizes that he’s not wearing his mask, and May was using his name, but he trusts Frank. He’s not worried. “Is he, uh—”
“He’s right as rain,” Frank says, scoffing. “He’s on his way here, he’s—”
“I’m here,” a voice says, from the corner, and they all quickly turn and see Daredevil standing there by the door.
“Jesus Christ,” Frank says.
“Uh, Friday,” Tony says.
“I disabled your AI,” Daredevil says, as Peter stares at him, gaping.
“Okay,” Tony says. “Why did you—”
“So he could have his little moment over there, all interesting, appearing in the corner,” Frank says, taking a long sip of his drink. “He loves a moment. He loves milking a moment.”
Peter hears May laughing, but he doesn’t turn around and look at her.
“Are you alright, Spider-Man?” Daredevil asks.
Peter is blinking really slowly. He feels better than he did earlier, like he’s got control of all his limbs and his heart and his breathing way better than when he finally arrived here. But he’s still blinking really slowly. “I’m alright,” he says. “Thank—thank you for asking.”
“Thank you for bringing the Punisher here,” Daredevil says.
“He knows your name, and he knows my name,” Frank says.
“He—”
“His name is Matt,” Frank says, pointedly. “Sorry, I’d already said it to May and Tony here. Peter was still asleep. His name’s Matt, Pete.”
Matt hangs his head. He crosses his arms and glances off towards the door.
“Daredevil,” Tony says. “Uh, Matt, do you want—I made tea. English breakfast, it’s—it’s what I’m into right now, blame my wife, but do you want—”
“He’ll have some,” Frank says, before Matt can answer.
Matt just sighs. “Sure,” he says, defeated.
Tony pats Peter’s arm as he gets up. “I’ll get you some,” he says, softly. “Sixteen sugars.”
Peter grins, shaking his head at him. He knows that means three. He swallows hard, trying to be normal. He wishes MJ was here. She likes the Punisher a little more than Peter would have expected her to. He seems to do well with women, despite the whole thing. Or maybe it’s because of the whole thing?
Peter looks at Matt again. “Were you able to chase down the guys that escaped?”
“Yeah, I found them, and I turned them in,” Matt says, and Frank grunts behind them. “But not before I made them tell me all about the superhero drug you got exposed to. I saw them setting it off at the power plant. They led me to the lab where it was originally made, and I’ve got a lead on the guy that started it. But better yet, I have an antidote.” He reaches into a little pack on his utility belt and takes out a small vial, and it’s like Tony teleports over to get it.
“Jesus, thank God,” Tony says, taking it from him. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” May says, “really.”
“Yeah, that’s the kinda shit he’s good for,” Frank says. “I’m glad you weren’t coddling them, Red. Christ.”
“We all have to work together,” Matt says, nodding. “I have a friend that drug affected very badly last month. We’ve been on the lookout for it too.”
“We appreciate it,” Tony says, walking back over from the kitchen and handing him a mug that says MY TUMMY HURTS AND I’M MAKING IT WORSE. Matt seems to try and ignore the saying, but Peter can hear Frank laughing. Tony brings Peter a mug, with the Spider-Man logo, and he squeezes his shoulder.
Matt just nods, and for a second, they’re all just sitting there, drinking tea. Matt clears throat. “Frank, did you want to, uh. Did you want to head out and—”
“Nah, I’m alright here, for now,” Frank says. “Turn the man’s AI back on, you asshole. Don’t go around disabling people’s shit and leaving it disabled.”
“Right, right,” Matt says, and he walks out the med bay door, still holding the mug.
“Sorry about his behavior,” Frank says, shaking his head. “Stark, Pete. Mrs. Parker.”
May is still laughing. “Mr. Castle, we’re having a birthday party for Peter next week—”
“Oh my God, May,” Peter says, nearly spilling the tea all over himself as he covers his eyes.
“What?” May asks. “I’m inviting him to the hero party, honey, not the, you know, the friends party, this is the hero party where everyone is going to be, you know, the Sam and Bucky, the uh, the Thor, uh, variety—”
“It’ll be fun,” Tony says, sipping his tea like this is all casual and not at all giving Peter a coronary. “We’re having a taco bar.”
“Oh, a taco bar,” Frank says. “That changes things.”
~
Frank does come to the party, which shocks the shit out of Peter. He brings his girlfriend, who Peter vaguely recognizes, and when she talks about her past as a reporter and her present as a lawyer, Frank looks at her with a look that Peter often finds himself looking at MJ. Peter has his own private moment of excitement that she has the same name that he chose for his AI. Everyone is perfectly nice, which Peter pretty much expected, but Tony has to put a stop to Thor’s ale challenge before anybody gets hurt.
They distribute the antidote to the superhero coup drug, and Peter finds himself checking in with the Punisher and Daredevil a lot more than he did before. It feels like they’re always keeping an eye on him, so he does the same for them.
He sits on the roof of the compound, kicking his feet back and forth.
“What are you doing?” Peter asks, watching as Iron Man rises up into the sky.
“Nothing,” Tony says. “Just being casual. Just hanging around. You’re going back tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah,” Peter says. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll be here and there.”
“Focus on your academic pursuits for now,” Tony says, hovering there in front of him. “You know we’ve got good people keeping an eye on things. Frank and Matt are in the email chain now. They’re on my map. Matt’s a lawyer, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Feels right,” Peter says. He stares at him for a second, the way the lights from the building reflect off his red and gold. “You know nobody’s gonna like, replace you, right? Even if you aren’t out there all the time. Nobody’s gonna replace you for me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says, nodding. “Yeah, I know that. I’m not worried about that at all. Not even thinking about it.”
Peter snorts. “Just making sure.”
“Where’s patrol tonight?” Tony asks. “You popping on the subway? Getting an Uber black? Uber Happy is available. Second date fell through, we all mourn.”
“Frank told me that demon gang is showing up in more places,” Peter says. “I’ve got three locations loaded into Karen that I’m gonna check out, see what’s going on.”
“Interesting, interesting,” Tony says.
Karen puts a little exclamation mark on Peter’s screen. He narrows his eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, okay, there we go, got it,” Tony says, and Karen puts another exclamation point, and says that she just shared three locations with Friday.
“Tony,” Peter says. “You are not invited.”
“Peter Benjamin Parker,” Tony says. “I am always invited. This is an open invitation. Okay, Great Kills, Staten Island, that’s an interesting name. Doesn’t sound ominous at all. Race you?”
“Tony,” Peter says, but Tony is already flying off into the night. Peter huffs, half smiling, half panicked, and he shoots a web and latches onto the nearest tree. “Tony, that’s not fair!” he yells. “It’s not dense over here, I have a hard time swinging for a little—Tony, you are not invited, this is a party of one—”
“So I’m busting it up,” Tony says, becoming a small dot in the distance that Peter continues to follow. “I’m breaking down the door.”
Peter grins, despite himself. “Wait up!” he yells. “Wait up!”