Chapter Text
If you’re standing in a building as it begins to collapse, with the walls shaking around you, bits of outdated ceiling littering your living room carpet, it’s probably time to figure out the fire escape route. They have it taped to the door, in hotel rooms. They don’t have it taped to the door in the 75 year old apartment building in which Peter is currently standing. It smells bad in there, the air was probably stale with mildew before the blast from some new alien space ship thing tore through the sky directly at it. Now though, that stale scent intertwined with the tangy and bitter taste of fresh blood and phosphorus. If there was ever a time to have a map with all the available exits readily available, it was now. It was an apartment, though, not a hotel, and so the door that Peter backed into, dragging the unconscious body of a 17 year old boy was hauntingly naked.
“Pete, you gotta get out of there, that shit’s going to blow and I don’t wanna explain that to May” Tony’s voice came through the coms, crackling and strained as he worked to keep civilians out of the blast zone.
“I’m working on it,” Peter grunted, trying to lift the boy, keep his face covered, and open the door all at the same time. It was hard work. Before the bite, multitasking just meant spending half of physics doodling in the margins of his notebook. Now, though, it meant trying to keep a kid alive, trying to find a way out, and trying to manage the icy fear that ran through his own veins. His hands hurt, he was sore all over already. If he made it out of this alive, he was going to spend the subsequent hours sprawled out across Tony’s plush living room sofa, Gatorade in hand, TV on. If he made it out of this alive, he was going to relax for a second. Give himself time to catch his fucking breath. That whole part of the plan was contingent on not dying though, which was the tricky part.
“Pete, you’ve got incoming, I’ll try and cover you as best I can, but you gotta get out of there,” Sam’s voice echoed in Peter’s ear.
“For fucks sake, can’t you see I’m trying?” He mumbled to himself before answering “Working on it” into his own microphone.
He couldn’t explain it, the series of events that happened next. It was like in a cartoon, when the background shatters like it’s been hit with a baseball, big triangle shaped chunks falling down into TV sanctioned oblivion. It was just like that, except that nothing was perfectly shaped and instead of the wall behind him collapsing into nothing, it came down onto the carpet in front of him.
“Pete,” Tony said, disapprovingly, or maybe condescendingly, Peter couldn’t figure it out, not that he had a whole lot of brain power left to spend on explicating his mentors exact tone, “You had better be fine or I swear to God-”
“Still fine, I think I’ll try and leave through the south side though, no point in taking the stairs if there's a shortcut, right?” Peter laughed shakily as he spun himself around, beginning the trek back across the demolished den, dragging the boy along with him.
“I wish I knew your name,” Peter mumbled to the unconscious body, “I don’t know what to call you and we’re getting pretty close now that I’ve had my hands all up under your sweaty ass armpits for 15 minutes. I can feel the sweat dude. I have gloves on and I can feel it. It’s making you hard to hold onto, you know that?”
He reached the end of the flooring, looking down to see the street below, littered with the wreckage of the still raging battle. He leaned the kid up against what remained of the wall, and scrubbed his hands up and down his face, trying to think, to gain his bearings, something that would help him figure out how to bring this boy safely to the streets to be evacuated. He needed to make a plan, and he needed to do it before the rest of the building got absolutely wrecked by those douchebags in spaceships.
Okay, plan time, Peter thought. “It’s a lot easier to figure out a solution to a difficult problem if we can split it up first, so we can find where we need to start,” His physics professor had said, earlier that week, under significantly less pressure. It still applied though, and Peter began to stand the boy up, leaning him up against his own thin frame. The boy was significantly bigger than he was, maybe he was a football player or a hockey player or something. In any case, Peter stood with his pelvis tilted forward and his chest leaned back, webbing their bodies together in such a way that the unconscious teen was laying his head against Peter's shoulder. Once they were stuck together, Peter made his move.
“Dude this is going to work and you’re too busy sleeping to see how cool I’m about to be.” Peter spoke, chin tilted downward so that his masked face brushed against the dark mop of curly hair.
“Alright, last civilian is secure, I’m heading out no-” Peter started into his microphone. An incoming rocket cut him off as it struck the foundation of their building, breaking down the structure floor by floor from the bottom up. Sam, who was still just outside, watched in horror as the textbook picture of a building demolition played out before his very eyes, taking Peter down with it. The sound he made wasn’t human, a cross between an upper register screech and a shout as he watched Peter leap from the sixth story just as it crumbled to dust and ash below him.
Peter quickly reached out his hand, a thin web of fluid flying from his wrist, connecting to the building across the street. His momentum didn’t slow as he crashed through the window and rolled into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom. It was hauntingly empty in the way that ghost towns are. The scene before him had him thinking about the Netflix Chernobyl special, how the abandoned houses were left in a hurry, the evidence of recent activity obscured by a blanket of gray.There were toys scattered across the floor, the ash from the street below flitting around in place of dust. A well loved stuffed bear lay half tucked under the bed, its matted brown fur sparkling with microscopic bits of shattered glass. He had those glass beads that teddy bears often have for eyes. They were shiny and black, white scuff marks marring the surface from what can only be assumed to be the careless and reckless love of a toddler. Peter fixated on that, as he lay pinned beneath his own precious cargo.
“Okay, well, that wasn’t the plan,” he huffed, finding it hard to take a full breath. “I’m glad I could cushion your fall though,” he added sarcastically, bringing one hand around to support the teen he was currently strapped to as he made an effort to stand up. Just as he began to separate the two of them, the boy groaned, bringing his head to the side, drowsily opening his eyes.
“Hey!” Peter said excitedly, “Hey dude, you’re alright, you’re okay, can you open your eyes for me?” He tried to sound encouraging, the way that Aunt May did when he woke up in the morning after he’d slept on the bathroom flood, fever ridden and vomiting. He tried to sound the way Tony did when he woke up in the med bay with a fresh concussion or stitches or a bone that needed setting. He tried, he really did.
Predictably, though, the kid freaked out. He started thrashing around, trying to disentangle himself from the web, trying to put distance between himself and Peter. The cut above his eyebrow leaked fresh blood down his face as he moved, and Peter briefly took a moment to wonder how he was moving so quickly at all, given the definite concussion he had sustained even before the most recent blast. It was probably adrenaline, keeping his body moving, pushing the pain signals away from his confused and tired brain. He was jittery and obviously scared, his eyes now fully open, wide with terror.
‘Dude, you’re alright, okay?” Peter said, trying his best to keep his voice even as he raised both his hands placatingly toward the boy, who was now huddled against the opposite wall, having scrambled there the moment the two were detached. “I’m Spider-man, dude, I got this, we’re gonna be fine,”
He really really was trying to keep calm. But, if he was being honest with himself, the most recent blast had scared the shit out of him. It was far too close a call and he was absolutely sure he wasn’t going to be enjoying his time of rest after all, if it turned out he was going to survive this. He was probably going to think about it and think about it and think about it , replaying it in his mind when he closed his eyes like that falling sensation you get when you’re too tired in math class only real this time, complete with images of the rapidly approaching asphalt.
“Can you tell me your name?” Peter asked, trying to inch his way closer. They still had to get down to the street to get to safety and it was going to be much harder if he didn’t have some kind of control over both parties.
The boy shook his head, tears springing to his eyes. He brought his shaky hand up to wipe at the blood that was nearing the top half of his eyelid. His face was pale and he looked so much younger then than his burly body suggested. It was hard to watch and had Peter not been so handily bit by a radioactive spider and transformed into a superhero with this kids safety as a top priority, he would have looked away. He almost did it anyway. Fear that’s your own is hard enough to look at. Fear that you can feel from someone else is a whole other story.
“That’s okay, that’s okay, but we have to get out of here, alright? It’s gonna be fine, but I have to get us to the ground. You got family or somethin’ I can help you find?” His voice came out shakier than he wanted it to. The boy nodded.
“M-my mom. I want- I want my mom.” He whispered, tears beginning to drip slowly down his cheeks. It was the unnerving kind of crying, the staring off into the distance, glassy eyed, broken kind that had Peter itching to avert his gaze again.
“Alright, dude, we’ll get you to her, okay? But you gotta work with me. We’re gonna go back out that window, I’ll swing us back down to the street, okay? He nodded again and Peter began the arduous task of webbing the two together again. Once he had them situated again, he looped the kids arms around his shoulders. It could’ve been comical, like the position of an awkward middle school slow dance, had it not been under such precarious circumstances.
“Okay here’s the plan,” Peter said, looping one arm around the boy as he inched them closer to the smashed in window, “I’m gonna swing us down to that lamppost over there, then to the one next to that. We’ll keep going like that until it’s safe to get down and then I can help you find your mom, alright?” He waited a short second for the boy to nod shakily into his collarbone.
“Alright, hang in there dude, I’ll get us down. Keep your chin down, if you can, it’ll help keep your neck safe if we run into any issues.” And with that, Peter brought his remaining hand through the shattered glass and the duo was once again flying across the street, in a zig zag sort of pattern, just as Peter had promised. Maybe this would work out after all. Maybe they’d be fine.
Peter couldn’t keep his thoughts from wandering to the poor kid in his arms. He could only have been a year or so older than Peter was himself, and it’s not like he was used to this sort of thing. For him, the terror and exhilaration that come from flinging yourself off rooftops and through windows would likely bring about the kind of trauma that takes a lifetime to overcome. Maybe he wouldn’t even get that far. Maybe it would be the kind that you become friends with, that you get used to. In either case, he was probably applying to colleges. Maybe he was one of those early acceptance kids, on a full ride athletic scholarship. Probably , Peter thought, he looked the type . He distracted himself, building a world for the kid he’d known for all of forty five minutes.
When they made it to the barricades Tony had set up at the edge of the city, Peter lowered the pair down, doing his best to shield them behind a car that had been flipped onto its side. Barricade was a loose term, but it was better to be here than to be six floors up in a high rise seconds away from collapse
“Alright, dude,” Peter said, cupping the teens face and forcing him to look up from where he sat on the pavement “You remember your name?”
“M-Mar- Martin”, he whispered, still not looking at Peter’s face, but rather over his shoulder at something in the distance.
“Alright Martin, nice to meet you, we gotta keep goin’, okay? Think you can walk a little for me? I promise the hard part is over we don’t have to go far.” Martin nodded shakily, before cautiously rising to his feet, swiping the blood away from his eyes once again. He swayed once he got to his feet and his face turned an unfortunately familiar shade of green, but he remained upright, for which Peter was grateful. He wrapped a sticky, gloved hand around Martins forearm and guided him quickly behind a nearby building.
“We gotta try and stay outta sight, okay? We’re gonna be fine, we just don’t want to attract attention to ourselves,” Peter didn’t know if he was narrating to ease his own fears or Martin’s, but whatever the case, it was helping a little bit.
“I, I don’t” Martin started, as he came to a stop, leaning up against the red brick of their newest cover, “I don’t feel too good,” That was all the warning that Peter got before the boy was doubled over, heaving onto his own shoes. Peter could argue that being a bystander to vomit was almost worse than being the vomiter, the smell hitting him as he turned his head to the side, pushing down his own nausea. May was a nurse, she did this type of shit every day and Peter tried to be like her, to channel that energy.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry, dude, I’m sorry,” He rambled, rubbing a hand up and down Martin’s back. He hoped he sounded like May.
“I- I don’t think- I do- I don’t think I’m okay,” Martin said, breaking off into a harsh series of coughs that shook his core, the kind that had Peter wincing in sympathy. It was then that Peter looked down to the pavement.
The kid’s feet were coated in black goop, something of a cross between tar and barbecue sauce. That was definitely not a good sign. Blood should be on the inside, blood should be on the inside, blood should be on the inside, Peter’s mind repeated. Blood should be on the inside.
He didn’t say it though.
“No no no no no, you’re okay, you’re alright, you’re just a little banged up, okay? We’re gonna get you some help and then you’ll be good as new. Hang in there, you’re doing so well,” He didn’t sound like May and he knew it.
“Kid, an update would be nice,” Tony’s voice cut through his panic, bringing him back up to the surface before he could sink back down into his own mind.
“I, I need help, please” Peter hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding like that, like a scared little kid. This was part of the job, people got hurt. It’s just that the people he was accustomed to seeing hurt though, were always on the other team, or at the very least capable of healing pretty quickly on their own.
“That doesn’t clear things up for me, bud” Tony responded, his voice softer, gentler, this time. “I’ve got your coordinates and I’m on my way, can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“I have a civilian, he needs, he needs help, Tony please,” It came out a whimper, which he hated. Get it together, Parker, get it together, get it together, get it together.
“Alright, kiddo, I’ll be there soon, he’ll be okay.”
Peter tried to turn his attention back to Martin, who was still leaning over, hands on his thighs, blood dribbling down his chin. Peter swiped at it with his thumb, that’s what May would do, wiping it on his pants.
“You’re alright, you’re okay,” Peter repeated, running his grubby fingers through Martin’s hair, “Tony’s gonna be here soon and we don’t have to walk anymore. He’ll take you far away, somewhere safe, okay? He’ll get you some good help, we’re gonna be just fine,”
Martin heaved again, bringing more blood up along with strings of dark maroon saliva. Peter did close his eyes, then, praying for even one more ounce of strength, praying for Tony to hurry up and get there to help them. And, in that split second, the building behind them let out a shutter before completely exploding, bringing bricks and chunks of furniture raining down around them, trapping them under a pile of rubble.