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Ow, Peter thought, struggling to make his way up the sheer face of the building, all the while ignore the bleeding cut on his side. The last time I snuck in like this was the night Ned found out. He was trying to distract himself in any way he could, so that he wouldn’t fall of the building, or something. He didn’t actually know if that would be possible.
“Karen, would it be possible for me to fall off the building?” he asked, though he was afraid of the answer.
“In your current state, you are not likely to fall off the building,” she replied in that crisp robot voice she had.
Peter couldn’t suppress the eye roll. ‘Not likely’ was not the answer he had been hoping for. “Thanks, Karen,” he said dryly.
Just a few more stories, he told himself, though that seemed like a terribly long way. He just kept telling himself left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot, trying to focus on getting there so he could fix himself up and collapse into bed.
“Shit,” he muttered. “I have a math test tomorrow.”
Finally, he got to his bedroom window and pushed it open, scuttling in and shutting it again. He pulled his mask off and threw it to the bed. He was sweaty, and his forehead was bleeding from a blow to the head, and he felt his vision swimming.
“Woah, not good,” he said. He hadn’t been a superhero for very long, so his pain tolerance wasn’t that great. He was not a fan of getting hurt in this business.
He pressed the spider in the center of the suit and it fell limply off him. Not even bothering to put on pants, he went to the bathroom and collapsed against the sink, opening the medicine cabinet and getting out a first aid kit.
“Peter?” Aunt May’s voice came from the open door.
Fuck.
He turned and looked up at her. “Hi, Aunt May,” he said, his voice cracking and sounding entirely too feminine.
“Peter, what the hell happened?” she asked, looking at the cut on his side with the panic of a caretaker.
“Just a little accident,” he said. “It looks worse than it is, I promise.”
“Oh my God. I’m calling Tony.” She turned and left the room.
“Wait, Aunt May!” Peter tried to call after her, but she ignored him.
He groaned slightly. If Tony found out that he was getting hurt on his little outings as Spider-Man, he might take the suit away from him, or have Karen put more child locks on it.
Knowing there was no way he was going to get his aunt to rethink her decision, he decided instead to focus on the injury. He figured the best way to clean it would be to get in the shower, so he took his boxers off and started the shower–after shutting the door.
When he decided the water was warm enough, he carefully stepped in. The water stung like a bitch on the cut, but it washed most of the blood away. He didn’t want to stay too long, since he knew that keeping it wet like this would keep it bleeding, so once he had washed the sweat and blood off of him he turned the shower off.
He felt bad for ruining one of Aunt May’s towels, but there wasn’t really much of an alternative. He put his boxers back on, not bothering with the packer, and got out some bandages and things. He realized he probably needed to go to the hospital, even though he really didn’t want to.
He supposed he’d let Aunt May and Mr. Stark decide on that. They were, after all, adults.
Sitting heavily on the toilet and feeling like he was probably going to pass out soon, he pressed the towel to his side to try and stop the bleeding from worsening.
It really wasn’t that bad, and the healing ability made him feel a little better. Still, though, it hurt a lot.
There was a knock on the door, and Mr. Stark’s voice through it. “Peter, it’s me. Can I come in?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Peter replied, mentally preparing himself for the chew-out he was about to receive.
Mr. Stark opened the door and poked his head in. Peter looked up at him and felt the instinctual urge to cover his chest with his arms. It had been months since his surgery, but he still hadn’t gotten quite used to the idea of not having boobs anymore.
“What happened?” Mr. Stark asked.
Peter couldn’t tell what kind of tone that was, and that was even more terrifying than if he had come in yelling and threatening to strangle him.
“The guy had a knife, I didn’t notice. It’s not a big deal.”
“Let me see,” he ordered.
Reluctantly, Peter took the towel away from his side.
Mr. Stark knelt beside him, examining the wound–which had stopped bleeding and was starting to scab slightly. “You really ought to be more careful,” he said. “This could have been a lot worse.”
“Do I have to go to the hospital?” he asked, watching Mr. Stark as he stood again.
“No, I don’t think the doctors will be able to handle you,” he said. “I’ll take you to Avengers HQ and I’ll fix you. I can’t exactly give you stitches out of a first aid kit. Until then, though, let me put some gauze on so it doesn’t start bleeding again. Then I want you to get dressed–baggy shirt–and meet me in the living room, okay?” He hadn’t raised his voice yet, but his tone had that quality to it that disappointed parents tended to have, where they were too worried about your safety to yell at you, but you knew it was coming, once they were sure you were going to be okay.
“Yes sir,” Peter said.
“Good, now raise your arms.”
Peter dropped the towel beside the toilet and obeyed as Mr. Stark got out some gauze and bandages. He wrapped it tightly around his midsection, and the question that had been burning a hole in Peter’s throat finally escaped. “Are you going to take the suit away from me again?” he asked, his voice a bit squeaky, the voice that hadn’t quite been affected by his testosterone yet.
Mr. Stark looked up at him. “I don’t know yet,” was all he said. “Let’s just focus on getting you patched up, and then I’ll decide on how long I’ll ground you.”
That was obviously metaphorical, but Peter had noticed more and more that Mr. Stark was acting kind of fatherly towards him.
When the gauze was wrapped and everything, Mr. Stark stood up and left the bathroom. Peter went to his room and put on some sweats and one of his uncle’s old shirts, which was about a thousand sizes too big for him.
He went out into the living room, where Aunt May seemed to be berating Mr. Stark in hushed whispers. She stopped upon seeing him, though. “You are I are going to have a conversation when you get home, young man,” she said, leveling a finger at him.
“Okay,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He had expected that.
Mr. Stark motioned Peter towards the door, and he followed. They went down to the bottom of the building in relative silence, but it was Mr. Stark who broke the silence. “Listen, Peter,” he said. It sounded like he wasn’t really sure what he was about to say, or that he was totally uncomfortable with it. “You really need to be more careful. I know having superpowers… makes you feel kind of invincible. I know, I was there once too. But you’re not. And you’re just a kid. I don’t want something happening to you, because it’d be my fault, and I don’t want any more… any more of that on my shoulders.”
Peter looked up at him, a little alarmed by the sudden vulnerability in his voice. “I am careful,” he said. “I just got a little sloppy, is all.”
“Yeah, and sloppy is what gets people, including yourself, killed.”
Peter recoiled slightly. He hadn’t been expecting the sudden anger. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark.”
He sighed and ran his hand over his face, and the elevator stopped. “Just call me Tony, Peter. I feel weird with all this 'Mr. Stark’ bullcrap.”
“Okay,” he said.
Mr. Stark–Tony–led Peter to the car and got in the back with him. It was the car one would expect Tony Stark to have, and Peter was almost certain there wasn’t a driver in the front. But the fact that they were going to be sitting in the back of the car together just made him more nervous, since that meant more talking.
“I get that you’re a kid and kids do crazy stuff, okay? But, you have to be mature enough to know when to pull back, and you have to realize that you’re vulnerable, just like everyone else.”
“Sorry, I guess I just get a little carried away.” Peter shrugged slightly and looked out the window, feeling ashamed. He just sounded so disappointed.
Tony sighed. “I don’t want you to get carried away, anymore, Pete.”
“I’ll try.”
The car ride passed mostly in silence, and when they got out, Peter followed Tony up into what seemed to be some kind of clinic.
“Now the stitches are gonna hurt, think you can handle it?”
“Yeah,” Peter said, rolling his eyes slightly.
Tony had Peter sit on one of the beds and taking his shirt off. Tony carefully undid the wrapping and got out some supplies for the stitches.
Peter cringed at every point of the needle, but tried to internalize any noises.
“Anything you want to talk about?” Tony asked after a minute or two of silence.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, looking down at Tony for a moment and biting his lip at another prick.
“Is there something going on at school?”
That was such a parental thing to say.
“Um, what do you mean?”
“Kids aren’t being mean to you?” Tony didn’t look up from his work as he spoke, but his voice sounded distinctly motherly.
“Well, Flash is always an asshole, and there are a couple people who like to fuck with me since I’m trans, but otherwise, not… really.”
Tony finally looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. “Is that bothering you?”
“I mean, yeah, of course, but like, it’s not a big deal.”
“Peter, I can tell that you’re being foolish to compensate.”
“What? No!” Peter almost moved, but a shooting pain from his side told him not to.
“I’ve been there too, you know,” he said. “You feel invincible in the suit, and you feel like it’s an escape, so you do things because you feel strong and manly, and it helps you feel better after people are dicks.”
“I do not.”
Another look made Peter fall silent.
“Okay. Maybe a little,” he admitted. “But not on purpose.”
Tony rolled his eyes and finished the stitches. “You have to be more careful. Just because you’re a superhero doesn’t mean you’re invincible.”
“That’s the third time you’ve said that today,” Peter pointed out.
“Maybe I need to say it several times to get it through your head,” he retorted.
He washed the wound and bound it again, and then stood up from the chair he had been sitting in to wash his hands.
“You got lucky this time. Peter, your Aunt May has enough to worry about. Don’t make her lose you too.”
That made Peter’s heart seize and he instantly felt guilty for doing this to his aunt.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Tony ruffled his hair. “How about we see about some kind of webbing modifications?” he offered, which made Peter smile.
“That sounds good,” he said, standing carefully up and putting his shirt back on.