Chapter Text
Frank's boots hit gravel when he came up over the lip of the parking structure, one of the many anonymous rooftops in a city full of them, the chain link sagging at one corner where somebody had cut through it at one point and no one ever bothered fixing it. It was a closed lot on a multistory building, almost identical to the many others the same in hells kitchen.
He had a single black AirPod jammed in his good ear, the call to Peter already open and quiet on the other end, mostly just the wind whipping past a mic, wired into his mask, every few seconds. Frank knew he could buy a real com but a phone call has always worked when sniping so that is left for the next time he works with Spidey.
"You in position?" Frank asked.
"Yep. You?"
"Getting there."
A pause, then, out of nowhere, a voice that was very much not Peter's chimed through the speaker, it was warm and a little too chipper for two in the morning. "Actually, Punisher, Peter's about four minutes out from the truck's location, if that helps with your timing."
Frank stopped walking.
"Who the fuck is that, Spiderman?"
"Oh, sorry Frank! That's E.V., not eevee like the Pokemon, just the letters, E and V. E dot V. She's my AI."
"What the fuck, Peter." Frank said, "Since when do you have that?"
"Since a while? I told you she helped us track this whole thing."
"You did not, at all, imply that. You made it sound like a computer program."
"Oh. My bad. Sorry, Frank. Also, she's a she, not an it."
Frank didn't say anything for a second, just stood there on the gravel with his jaw working like he was chewing on the words before he let them out.
"No," he said finally. Flat and gruff, and there was the smallest crack in it, something almost like disbelief trying to leak through the granite of his tone.
Peter caught the shape of the unsaid uh, in front of it, loud and clear even over a bad connection. Peter chuckled, of course Frank was surprised by E.V.
Frank kept walking anyway, because talking about it wasn't going to make it less insane. and found a good vantage point on the opposite rooftop he was on, an AC unit the size of a dumpster parked off to his left, it was cover enough if things went sideways.
Frank looked for where Peter was, a flicker of red catching low along the far ledge and he spotted him. Spiderman wasn't perched on top of anything, he was stuck to the underside of the concrete barrier across the lot, hanging there sideways like. One hand splayed flat against the concrete, nothing else holding him there that Frank could make out.
He was so still he looked like he wasn't breathing, and that was somehow terrifying, seeing the normally so animated Spiderman, as still as an inanimate object. There was no shift of weight, he didn’t settle at all, just stopped his movement from one breath to the next.
Just hanging there in the dark with his head tipped at an angle nothing with a spine should be able to hold for that long, face tipped up to the sky, since he was below the lip of the building. It reminded Frank of the way a fox watches a hole it already knows a rodent going to crawl out of, silent, still, and completely intent in his focus. It was unnerving, really.
Below, the lot held one vehicle so far. It was a white truck, boxy, and had dirty rear trunk panels, the kind you'd see hauling produce upstate, except this was Hell's Kitchen, and there wasn't a farm within eighty miles of it, so why? Frank looked at it a long moment through his scope. It genuinely baffled him that these criminals had made it this far being this obvious.
"Drugs are in the frame," Peter said quietly. "Back bed and they are welded in under it, they probably just need to pop the weld a bit to get into the cavity."
"How do you know that?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy."
"...What?"
Peter's laugh was quiet, mostly breath, and Frank's eyebrows pulled together on the other rooftop, somewhere between confused and bemusement.
The second vehicle rolled in a few minutes later, headlights sweeping wide across the concrete before cutting out. Peter waited, patient in a way that never quite matched how people pictured him, until every last one of them was out and starting to move product between trucks. Then three went down in about as many seconds, webbed at the wrists and yanked flat onto the pavement hard enough to knock the wind out of them before they could recognize what had hit them.
The driver of the first truck went for the ignition and Frank put a round through the windshield before his hand made it back onto the wheel.
For a second, it looked over, and that was it. Easy subdue, shoot, web, and it was done. Frank aimed his scope on Spiderman to see what he was doing through it, his finger resting above the trigger.
"Frank. More incoming." Peter's voice sounded in his ear, his voice rising at the end of the last word, tone tighter in surprise and anticipation.
It was never this easy, Frank should have known. Spiderman’s posture quickly changed, tension snapping into his frame and head whipping to the access ramp of the roof.
Another vehicle came fishtailing onto the roof through the access ramp, and after that it stopped being a clean job. Frank watched as Peter kept moving, dropping more and more bodies, webbing them to the ground, but there were just too many of them now, more than the intel had accounted for.
Peter jumped over one of the heads, the man's gun trying to track his movement, Spiderman used the man's same shoulder to springboard higher into the air, and shooting a web off onto his foot, tripping him in the same motion. He then grabbed the man's gun, throwing it under the truck before touching down on the ground, now grabbing the man from behind.
Frank could feel their control of the situation slipping, the gap between what he could see and what he needed to see to keep Peter's back covered quickly diminishing. Spiderman was competent, he wouldn’t have made it this far if he hadn’t been. Hell, Frank held Spiderman in high regard years ago, more so now after learning just who was underneath the mask. Now however, Frank was loathsome to admit, he also felt worry when seeing Spiderman in a dangerous situation.
Peter felt the control slipping as well. Felt himself get boxed in by the numbers, and there was really only one way through that now. He breathed deeply though his nose, a sigh of frustration slipping out.
“Ugh, you all suck, you know that right?” He griped to no response other than someone in a grey zip up hoodie punching him in the stomach, before Peter knocked him away.
"E.V., turn the dampeners off. All the way."
"Peter, that's not recommended without-"
"Now, please."
It hit like a wave, crashing into him all at once, pulling him under. Every sound in a two block radius arrived at once, gunfire and engines and someone's radio three floors down and the low sweet chemical stink of whatever was packed into the truck bed, and light from the trucks lights that had no business being that buzzing loud.
It all came apart into a thousand separate points he could track individually. Peter groaned and grabbed the side of his head, staggering half a step. The stimuli fracturing into a hundred different pinpoints he needed to cut his focus on.
Frank heard Peters side of the conversation clean through the com, it scared him. "Peter. What happened. You hit?"
"Fine, Frank. Give me a second."
Frank didn't wait for the second. He started putting rounds into anyone still standing near Peter, because whatever was happening, it wasn't going to matter if the kid went down surrounded. He aimed for ankles, wrists, shoulders, knees, areas he could put out of commission with his mercy bullets. He still avoided aiming for the neck and head with his rubber rounds, still deadly shots, despite the rubber rounds.
Peter webbed another limb to the ground. The thing with his spidey sense, was not that he could dodge bullets, but the intentions. The second a gun is aimed in his direction, Peter instinctually moves out of the way, coincidentally, this looked like he was dodging the bullets. Welp, it didn’t hurt for people to think that, he supposed, and his mutation just made it easier to sense more pinpoints of intent. He needed to focus on them now, too many weapons surrounding him.
A bullet went past Peter's ear close enough that he flinched sideways on reflex, and half a breath later one of Frank's rounds screamed by even closer, so close Peter's whole body jerked with it, his instincts not caught up to the fact that it wasn't aimed at him, and only something dangerous near him, not at him. He heard the wrist it hit shatter from thirty yards away. It was like a stick snapped right next to his ear.
Then he took one breath, and sorted himself out, he had to. He let himself sink into the motions, thoughts, and movements his body unconsciously wanted him to make, letting his instincts take further over his actions. He ignored the snaps of danger inches close to him and only moved out of the way for the ones directed right at him, no longer flinching from Frank's shots.
Frank watched it happen through the scope, he watched as the kid stopped just trying to dodge, hunched in over himself. He watched as his arms extended into himself and his feet gained a surer footing as he began hitting back. His movements were precise, cleaner, more direct, and much, much, faster.
Two more vehicles' worth of company arrived while Frank was busy being quietly impressed with whatever it was Peter had just decided to do. A woman dropped down off the ramp railing of the vehicle, and a guy with a very familiar looking shield came in right behind her.
"Spiderman!" the woman called out, cheerful in a way that did not match the general vibe of the rooftop at all. "Hello, we are here to help you now."
Peter, mid backflip over somebody trying to hit him with a tire iron, managed, "Black Widow! Good to see you, uh, why are you here, though?"
Frank went quiet on the roof across the way. He didn't know these two, and they sure as hell didn't know him, so he just kept his rifle up and stopped firing, watching from the dark like he'd never been there at all.
Yelena's attention kept snagging on Spiderman, mostly because he was flinching occasionally. Yelena watched the bullets she could track passed close enough to graze fabric and somehow never touched his skin, Impressive, but Yelena really didn’t want him to get hit.
Before either of them hit the ground, Yelena caught the shape of him clinging to the underside of the truck's open cargo door, upside down. For one full second he didn't move at all, watching the fight. Then in a split second, he was gone from the door and already gone from the air too, already crouched over a body that hadn't finished falling yet, and Yelena's eyes did that thing where they just skipped, it made the back of her neck feel cold. It felt like her eyes glitched. It reminded Yelena of those videos where people flick the light on and off and someone only moves when its off, but here, there was no light switch.
Sure, Spiderman had enhanced senses, but so did Bucky and he had been shot too many times, Yelena hit the ground in a roll and joined the fray, kicking someone down with her leg.
John threw his shield across the lot and clipped a guy square in the jaw, which sent him folding sideways into a stack of crates. Peter webbed up the last one still on his feet a second later.
That left one conscious.
The last guy was just stuck, back against the truck's front tire with a wrist bound to the rubber, breathing hard through his nose. Peter crouched in front of him. He crouched low, his weight on the balls of his feet.
Yelena and John crossed the lot toward them, adrenaline still working its way out of their systems. They'd both clocked, coming in, how many guys Spider-Man had apparently been handling solo before they arrived, and there had been a moment, brief, that John was fairly sure he'd seen the guy flinch and grab his own head like something had actually hurt him. By the time they got close enough to ask about it, though, Spider-Man looked completely fine and John decided he must have imagined it.
"You good?" Frank's voice came through his mask, just for Peter.
Peter replied, "Fine, Frank.", low enough for only him to hear.
Yelena crouched down a few feet off, elbows on her knees. "We heard you were out here fighting off half of Hell's Kitchen by yourself. Somebody called it in." She didn't say who. Neither of them actually knew yet, which was its own small mystery for another day.
Ok, maybe not so small, but thats a later problem, for later Yelena. A small potato job that might be hiding a medium potato underneath it. Right now it was small potato though, so a later problem.
The criminal against the tire was grinning now, wide and a little too loose at the edges. It sent alarm bells ringing in Yelanas mind. And she saw John’s stance hadn’t loosened at all either.
"So," Peter said, conversational in an almost friendly way, "you're gonna tell me who's running this, or I'm gonna find out some other way, and honestly? The other way's a lot more fun for me than it is for you."
Peter planned to call Frank down, he wouldnt torture with Pete around, he knew better than that now, but threat of The Punisher was enough to scare quite a few criminals before, it could work again.
The words came out light and breezy, not something Yelena would have expected from The Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman. Yelena's smile faded by about half a degree, unsure as to how the criminal would respond to Spiderman’s maybe actually truthful threat. He sounded a little too casual to be lying about implied torture. John's hand drifted a little closer to a weapon on his belt as well.
“Everyone knows spiderman doesn’t do that.” The guy laughed instead, high and thin, his voice reedy and clearly smoke damaged from too many cigarettes. and Peter caught the twitch of his fingers coming out of his pocket of his jacket with something that made his spider sense shriek in alarm a half second before Frank did.
Frank's scope found the guy's head and his trigger finger squeezed.
Peter's hand snapped out and closed around the criminal's wrist before the loose drugs in his fist ever cleared his pocket, and in the exact same motion, without so much as turning to look, his other hand shot up and caught Frank's bullet out of the air, fingers folding around it.
His mask's eyes widened for half a second before the black surrounding the white narrowed again. Peter tucked it into his belt pouch without breaking eye contact with the guy still frozen under his grip, and let out a short breath through his nose that sounded like mild annoyance.
The criminal made a sound that wasn't quite a word and more of a squeak.
Yelena's mouth had gone slightly open. John's hadn't quite recovered his own function yet either. Since when could Spiderman catch bullets?!