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“Oh shit,” Peter breathes, rattling his wrists in the handcuffs. “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay, this is fine. It’s fine. Totally cool and fine and okay.” He glances up, and strains against them, his lip caught between his teeth.
Maybe not okay.
But it’s gotta be, so...it is. He can do this. He can totally do this.
He was able to break the other three pairs with like, no problem.
He strains again, putting all his strength into breaking them, getting himself free, but the handcuffs don’t budge at all, like they don’t know he’s a superhero that can totally get out of this stuff with no problems on the regular. Or they know, and they don’t care.
Peter sighs, his heart beating a little faster. It isn’t as if he’s languishing in some villain’s rotting basement. He’s in the new compound, in one of the weapon armories. And he...did this to himself.
He’s supposed to be able to get out. That was the whole point of this, the whole test, and now he’s...now he’s trapped.
“Dammit,” he breathes, hurting his wrists with how hard he’s shaking and pulling, trying to get himself out. He’d lashed himself to the wall, like he’d done with the three previous pairs of cuffs, and the broken remains of those are in a drawer a couple feet away. That shit was nothing, that shit was two seconds and out.
Peter wouldn’t exactly call himself paranoid, but his new friend Johnny got kidnapped last week, and he can set his whole damn body on fire. But the thing that kept him there, for a good four days until his team found him, was the pair of handcuffs the bad guys were holding him with. Peter, Tony and the rest of them looked over the case, and it—it made Peter a little nervous. It made Peter want to test his strength. But, since the whole end of the world and coming back to life thing, Peter has been really tentative about, well, stressing Tony out. So he decided to conduct this little experiment on his own. So Tony wouldn’t get stressed out. And so nobody else would judge him. Sam is always, always, always on the judgement train.
Peter felt pretty good about getting out of Avenger-level restraints. And these particular shackles didn’t look like anything too out of the ordinary, and they were gonna be the last ones he tried before he walked out of here a bit too egotistical and cocky, sure he could get out real fast if any kidnapper tried it with him like they did with Johnny.
But now he’s stuck.
He groans, planting both feet on the ground, and he stands up, arching his back. He can’t pull his arms out straight behind him without pulling them out of their sockets, so he’s just standing like an idiot with his arms raised painfully directly behind his head. He tugs and grits and groans, squeezing his eyes shut tight, and then he drops back down, the chain clamoring against the wall.
“Ugh, no, no, no,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. He sits there for a couple long seconds, simmering in new anger, and then he starts flailing around, slamming his arms and hands against the wall, knocking his legs into the ground, over and over in a tantrum he hasn’t felt the likes of since he was a kid.
But it isn’t good enough.
Tears cling to the corners of his eyes, and he can’t even wipe them away. He leans against the wall, angry at himself and what a dumbass he is, equally as interested in what the hell these cuffs are made of that he can’t get out of them. He purposefully arranged himself in an area the cameras can’t see, and people don’t come down here a whole lot, unless there’s some kind of big battle starting, which there hasn’t been, as of late.
He has no idea when someone is gonna find him. He keeps trying, pulling and straining until he can feel his skin burning, cuts forming, and Jesus, he’s such a moron. He got too cocky, too full of himself, but how the hell was he supposed to know Tony would store something Spider-Man can’t get out of?
Actually, it makes sense, considering the kind of shit Tony’s faced in the past. Like, actual evil aliens.
“Idiot, idiot, idiot,” Peter mutters, balling his hands into angry fists. He tries to decide what the hell he’s gonna do, and embarrassment blooms in his cheeks. This is definitely one of the stupider things he’s done, and Tony knows he’s here right now, in the compound. He’s gonna wonder where he is.
Peter’s phone sits, useless, in his pocket.
He sighs, his hands hurting already, and sucks in a big breath. “Help!” he yells. “Tony—somebody, help me! Help! I’m in here—I, uh—need help!”
He yells and yells until his throat hurts. A broken record. And, after what feels like a billion years, he hears the door chime, and then open.
“Help!” he yells. “Whoever it is—it’s, it’s—”
“Peter?” Tony’s voice asks.
“Oh my God,” Peter says, desperately relieved. “Tony. I’m over here!”
Tony turns the corner, and as soon he sets eyes on Peter, his face contorts in horror. “Who the hell did this to you?” he asks, rushing over to him.
And with that sentence, Peter’s brain misfires, and goes completely blank. All thoughts are replaced with the need to fix this, make it look better, because despite the fact that Tony is like a father to him, Peter still absolutely hates looking like an idiot in front of him. And this is a prime example of a perfect idiot.
“A bad guy,” Peter says, deadpan, without thinking. Like the dumbest possible response his brain could have spit out.
Tony kneels next to him, eyes darting from Peter’s face to the handcuffs. “A—a what? A bad guy? What bad guy? There’s a bad guy in the compound?”
Peter has a moment to change it, to turn it around, and he stares, in a complete state of panic.
“Okay kid, I got you,” Tony says, patting Peter on the shoulder with his good hand, not the iron one he’s had since everything happened with the infinity stones. “Jesus, must be someone nasty if they got the upper hand on you.”
He gets up, walks over to where Peter got the handcuffs from, and Peter’s heart falls directly into his stomach when he sees him going for the drawer where all the broken handcuffs are. But he opens the one above it instead, fishing around. “Those things are vibranium,” Tony says, looking over his shoulder at Peter. “Bet you’d be out of ‘em already if they weren’t.”
“Oh,” Peter says, stupidly. He can still save this. He can pull the lie back. He totally can. He’s gonna do it. He’s gonna tell him the truth.
“Yeah, I didn’t—I didn’t want him to know I was Spider-Man.”
No. No, that’s not what he wanted to say at all.
“Good call, buddy,” Tony says, and he pulls a key out and approaches Peter. “I need an all call code 49 complete shutdown,” Tony says, pressing something in his ear.
Oh no. Oh no.
“Spider-baby was compromised, assisting now,” Tony says. He walks back over, connects the key to the middle of the cuffs, and they snap off. Peter’s arms drop as Tony tosses the cuffs away, and he kneels down again, tilting his head at him. “You okay, kid? For real.”
Peter nods, his tongue like sand. He needs to tell him. He needs to.
Tony presses the com in his ear again. “Yeah, all exits. Deploy drones, and—get Rhodey suited up.”
Peter swallows hard, rubbing his wrists. “Uh, Tony—”
“Here, c’mon,” Tony says, taking his hands and gently pulling him to his feet. He tugs him into a hug as soon as he’s standing, ruffling his hair. “Can’t believe some dickhead got past security—handcuffed one of my damn kids—”
Peter hugs him back weakly, watching as his exit window quickly gets smaller and smaller. “Um, uh, Tony, I need—”
Tony pulls back, holding him by the shoulders and looking at him intently. The iron arm glints shiny and red under the lights in here. “I’m gonna go grab your suit, make sure May, Pep and Mo are secure, and then I’ll come back and get you, okay Pete?”
Peter is the biggest moron from moronville. The most massive idiot in New York. Or the entire world. Probably the whole universe.
Tony gives him a very particular look, and Peter gapes at him like a fish. “Yeah, keep everyone where they are,” Tony says, eyes glancing away as he talks into the com again. He looks back at Peter. “Stay here, kid, stay ready, don’t let ‘em get you again, alright?” He claps Peter’s shoulder, squeezing it, and before Peter can croak out another word, Tony turns and rushes for the door, quickly heading out.
Peter stands there, and he covers his face with his hands. “Oh my God,” he groans. He has to follow him, he’s gotta tell him. “But that’ll make me look ten times worse!” Peter says out loud, turning in a circle. “Ten times! Twenty!” He growls to himself, taking two steps towards the door with the intent to go after Tony, but then he comes to a quick halt, rolling his eyes so hard his brain hurts. “Stupid. So stupid.”
He’s an idiot. He’s an idiot.
~
Tony ducks into the room where Pepper and May are once he gets off the elevator, and they’ve still got the menagerie of camera screens projecting on the wall.
“He still standing there?” Tony asks, looking at the two of them.
“Yup,” Pepper says. “Well—”
“I think he’s considering hiding the other pairs of broken handcuffs somewhere else,” May says, clicking her tongue. “He really said it was a bad guy?” she asks, sounding pained.
“He really said it was a bad guy,” Tony says.
May shakes her head. “I was hoping I imagined the whole thing.”
“You guys got my com calls right?” Tony asks.
“Loud and clear,” Pepper says.
“Good, I was a little worried I was actually broadcasting,” Tony says, narrowing his eyes at the images on the screen. “Was priming myself for Rhodey to come busting through the wall.”
“Code 49 isn’t even a real code,” May says. “Peter had me study them all a month ago.”
“That’s why I think his brain is broken right now,” Tony says. “Because he totally knows all the codes. We had a quiz on it. He beat Sam out by twenty points and danced in his face.”
“This is one million percent about the Johnny Storm thing,” Pepper says, looking at Tony as he sits back down.
“Yeah,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest, running his hand over the metal. “But still. That’s what—training is for, he doesn’t need to be strapping himself to the damn wall in the armory. And he knows I fixed that camera angle. I told him that.”
“He was clearly distracted, by God knows what,” May says.
Tony watches as Peter picks up the handcuffs and drops them back down, kicking them away from him in anger. He winces, reaching down and rubbing his foot. Tony’s heart swells with fondness and sympathy. The kid is so damn much sometimes, but Tony just revels in it. He’s so glad to have him back. No matter what weird shit he’s doing.
“Good lord,” Pepper says.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” May says.
Tony sighs. “I should start with the sirens,” he says. “But I feel bad.”
“You do that, he’ll come running out and tell you it was all a lie,” May says. “He usually doesn’t let things go this far.”
“He’s embarrassed,” Pepper says, turning around and pouting at Tony. “Poor thing.”
Tony raises his eyebrows. “You know I love him, but he should know better by now. I’ve done all kinds of shit that could be considered weird and nobody even cares anymore. It just is what it is. Anything goes here, we’ve all been through hell and back. It’s fine. I caught Happy eating a head of lettuce the other day. We’re still pals.”
He watches Peter rake his hands through his hair, and okay, yeah, Tony’s feeling really bad now. They’ve been getting back into the groove of playing the occasional trick on each other, but he didn’t expect the kid to actually let it get this far. Usually he fesses up pretty fast. “I mean, if we really look at this—he got out of all of them but the vibranium. Some of the strongest metals in the world, that we’d use for like—other worldly threats and shit. So. We should be proud. He’s never gonna encounter vibranium handcuffs around here. So—we’re good, on the kidnapping front. He’ll be fine. That’s a win.”
May blows out a breath. “There’s that,” she says.
Tony watches Peter debate with himself, walking back and forth, and Tony decides not to torture the kid anymore. He braces his hands on the chair and gets back up, making for the door. “Okay, I’m gonna go get him, bring him in here, and show him that we were watching his antics. Then we’re gonna talk about practicing this kind of shit with other people so we don’t get stuck.”
“Never thought we’d have to ward Peter against handcuffing himself to things,” May says. “Sorry, Tony.”
“No, it’s a journey, May,” Tony says, turning around and smiling at her. “I can’t wait to see what kind of hijinks he gets himself into next.”
As long as he never disappears again. That’s all that matters.