Work Text:
Here’s how it starts.
They’re having coffee at a small shop in Queens, late at night, in a back alley that’s slight enough to be overlooked when passed by in a car. Peter had stopped a half-hearted attempted robbery at the shop thirty minutes ago, and Tony, returning from an event nearby, joined in, only to see the backs of the perpetrators as they made a run for it. The shaken-but-grateful barista declined Peter’s offer to chase the guys down, and instead offered him and Tony drinks on the house.
“I don’t even like coffee,” Peter whispers to Tony when they step out of the shop, eliciting a grin from the older man.
“Get used to it already. Another five years and you’ll be just as addicted as everyone else.” He leans against the wall at the building’s entry and demonstratively takes another large sip. Peter wrinkles his nose before copying him. “Had my first espresso at the age of, what, seven?”
Peter opens his mouth to undoubtedly make a comment about the harm that did to Tony, but then something in his expression shifts and he closes it again. He frowns, rubs his neck, and says, “Something’s going on.” At the same moment, Tony’s own stomach twists in a nauseating way that, without needing any spider senses, lets him know shit is about to go down.
But instead, it’s him who goes down.
*
When Tony comes to, Peter is already awake, leaning against an ugly grey concrete wall, a mixture of relief and fear on his face. “I told you I don’t like coffee,” he deadpans.
“And Natasha told both of us not to accept drinks from strangers,” Tony retorts, slowly sitting up and taking in their surroundings. His head starts spinning from the residual drugs in his system. He closes his eyes and swallows until the need to be sick passes. “Don’t ever tell her that, but looks like she had a point.”
It’s not a cave, he tells his brain as his anxiety kicks into overdrive. They’re not in the desert, and his heart is still beating—albeit a bit too rapidly. These are the good things.
(The bad thing, of course—the horribly bad thing—is that this is entirely Tony’s fault, yet he already knows that Peter is going to have to pay for it in one way or another).
The place looks like a basement-unit-turned-prison-cell which has been stripped down to its bare essentials and heavily reinforced. A quick glance around reveals nothing that could be used as a weapon, from the thinly-padded mats on the ground, to the styrofoam cup that’s been placed under a dripping pipe above a hole in the corner that’s apparently meant to constitute the bathroom. There’s a small window in the door at the height of their faces, blocked off by iron prison bars, and another one resembling a cat flap at the bottom.
Tony gets to his feet a bit unsteadily and squints through the bars. He can see more grey walls and an empty chair on the opposite site of the corridor, as well as two closed doors leading to other rooms. “How long have you been awake? Did you see anyone?” he asks.
“Maybe an hour,” Peter replies. “And no.” His tone is casual, but with the slightest tremble to it that tells Tony he is trying very hard not to freak the fuck out.
He steps away from the door and towards the kid, giving him a once-over. Only then he notices the slim metal-cased collar around his neck.
“Yeah, about that…” Peter says, noticing his gaze.
“Let me see.” Tony squats down to get a closer look at the device.
“Don’t touch–” Peter starts, but it’s too late; Tony has already gripped the device, which subsequently sparks as electroshocks travel through the kid’s body. Tony yelps and lets go immediately, but Peter is already convulsing against the wall, letting out low, gasping noises of pain.
“Shit, Pete,” Tony breathes as it stops a few seconds later. “I’m so sorry. You okay?”
Stupid question.
“Yeah. It’s alright,” Peter pants. “I tried that already,” he adds when he has caught his breath. “Can’t touch it, can’t take it off, and most importantly, I can’t cross that line.”
He points to the floor where Tony sees a narrow metal line embedded into the ground, likely protecting some kind of forcefield below. It runs through the whole room, dividing the space with the mats and water from the space closer to the exit. “I think it’s to keep me away from the door,” Peter explains what Tony has already grasped.
“It’s got two sensors that shock you when you touch it and close the circuit,” Tony assesses the collar, this time without touching it. “Probably works on a remote control too. They definitely know what they’re doing.”
“Oh yes, I hope so.” The face of a woman comes into view behind the door. Platinum blonde hair, artificially tanned skin, and a sick look of satisfaction in her eyes. “Mr. Stark, Mr. Parker, welcome to your new home.”
*
She wants money from Stark Industries, which is pretty much what Tony expected. What surprises him is that she hasn’t even touched them yet, apart from putting the electric collar on Peter while he was unconscious. But other than that, there’s nothing that Platinum Blonde seems to want from Tony. He’s almost relieved at first, because Stark Industries won’t pay. He knows that; it’s a policy he personally insisted on after Afghanistan. But since Pepper has been informed that they were taken, someone must be out looking for them already.
It’s only a matter of time—that’s what he tells himself and Peter. No reason to risk anything stupid.
They can’t really be sure how much time passes, but based on how the light that comes in through the metal bars—which is the only illumination in the cell apart from the dim bulb overhead—regularly switches from natural to electric, he figures it’s about three days before the fragile calm gives way.
Because when she finally starts to torture them, it’s not because she wants information, or money, or for him to build another weapon.
It’s just for fun.
*
“Thirty-eight seconds,” Platinum Blonde assesses, letting the words melt sardonically on her tongue. “That’s not a lot of time to finish a meal, am I right, Mr Parker?”
“Fuck you,” Tony grits out. Through the pain, he curses himself, curses the barista back at that hole in the wall in Queens, but most of all, he curses Platinum Blonde and her hulk-of-a-man goon who’s currently pressing a gun into his ribs. She’s made it clear that the guy would be only too happy to shoot if Peter—who is seated on the other side of a folding table in front of a stack of pancakes (pancakes, of all things)—so much as tries to raise a hand against them.
“We should try again, shouldn’t we?” she asks, teasingly, clearly enjoying herself. Her body is small and frail, though her character is anything but. An army green sleeveless vest barely covers the swastika tattoo on her shoulder, and apart from immigrants, she’s made it clear that she has a particular hate for what she calls “mutants”—a fuzzy category for whatever enhanced people she likes to put into it. Peter’s collar had been her design, based on stolen government tech, she’d informed them proudly.
“Mr Stark, should we proceed?”
And Tony, defeated, grits his teeth and pushes his palms down onto the burning hot kitchen stove.
He can’t count the number of jokes he’s made about Peter’s sheer insatiable appetite since he’s known the kid, but now it’s not funny anymore; it’s an outright problem. The water they manage to collect in a plastic cup from the dripping pipe is just enough if they ration it well, but the amount of food that is pushed through the cat flap once or twice a day is barely sufficient for normal humans to survive, and simply ridiculous for Peter’s enhanced metabolism.
Tony has cut down on food as much as he can without virtually passing out from hunger, but it’s still not enough for Peter—not enough in the slightest. And when he asked for more, demanded it angrily through the bars after three days of seeing Peter grow weaker and weaker, when he swore he wouldn’t stop shouting until they gave the kid more food, they offered him a deal.
The smell coming from his hands is gruesome, the pain almost unbearable now. He feels himself sway, feels his fingers shake under the willpower it takes him not to pull them away. The last time he’d smelled burned flesh was when he escaped from Afghanistan and fucked up his shoulder while setting the terrorist camp on fire, and why on earth is his brain time and time again circling back to the one event he really doesn’t want to think about right now?
The “deal” their captor offered is less of a bargain and more of a sick game. As long as Tony holds his palms on the stove, slowly letting his skin melt away, Peter is allowed to eat. The moment Tony pulls his hands away, Peter has to stop, or Platinum Blonde will press a small button on the remote that controls his electric collar and send shocks through his body (she still does this, every time, even when he stops chewing right away). It’s simple and cruel and there’s absolutely nothing Tony can do to stop it, not with the boy at the mercy of their captors.
His whole body seems to be on fire now instead of just his palms. He knows that the stove can’t even be that hot because otherwise his nerve endings would have been burnt away by now and he wouldn’t feel a thing anymore, but it surely hurts as if it was an iron ore. Just another five seconds, he tells himself. Another five, when they are over. Just three―you can do three more. Another―
And then, without knowing how, Tony is on his knees, gasping for breath, tears of pain springing to his eyes.
“Forty-two. Well, it doesn’t look like the insect freak is getting a full stomach today.”
Peter’s eyes are red with unshed tears. He chokes out something at Tony between sobs and the pancakes still in his mouth, undoubtedly telling him to stop, but Tony didn’t listen to him earlier, and he isn’t going to now.
“You have one more chance, Stark,” Platinum Blonde says.
Peter had begged Tony not to agree, but they both knew that another few days with rations like that would be a death sentence for him. So Tony stares at him with something he hopes resembles reassurance, tries to communicate that he’s fine, that it’s the only option, that it’s just a bit of pain and he’s had so, so much worse in his life, urges him to use the time he has and get as many calories into himself as he can.
(Something in him wonders whether it’s a selfish choice, because the one thing he couldn’t live with would be Peter dying on his watch. But the rest of him doesn’t care, as long as this selfishness means that the kid stays alive.)
“Ready, Stark?”
Tony bites his lip so hard it draws blood, and then he presses his hands down onto the stove again.
*
“Show me,” Peter demands later, back in the cell, when Tony’s knees almost give out from pain. He shakes his head slowly, the walls swaying along with it.
“It’s alright,” he rasps.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Peter accuses. “Why did you do what she said?”
Tony is too dizzy to lie. “Because I wasn’t about to let you starve, kid. And I will do it again if I have to.”
Peter swallows hard, his eyes full of anger and helplessness. “At least let me look at your hands,” he repeats. This time, Tony obliges, mostly because the kid looks very close to tears again. Peter pales and gulps at the sight of the raw, red flesh.
“Don’t throw up now,” Tony quips before he can stop himself. “That would be a waste of effort.”
Peter shoots him a hurt glare before concentrating on using their precious water supply to rinse out the wounds, and the apology on Tony’s lips comes out only as a pained groan.
*
They receive the same offer again the next day but Peter presses a hand over Tony’s mouth and gives him a death glare until the older man nods in defeat and declines.
“Well, well, Stark, let’s see how long you last,” Platinum Blonde says.
The day passes slowly with them examining every inch of the room once again, only to conclude that waiting for a rescue is still their best strategy. Tony’s palms are covered in a layer of blisters, pounding painfully in rhythm with his heartbeat, and Peter has guilt written all over his face every time he looks at them.
So Tony tries to distract him with stories about SI, the bots, that one holiday in Thailand where Pepper got the conversions mixed up and accidentally tipped the driver the equivalent of what amounted to just shy of eight thousand American dollars. It’s pretty clear that the kid is trying his best not to let hopelessness get the better of him, and the only reason he’s managing that is because he trusts that Tony knows what he’s doing.
If only that were true.
At night, after they curl up on the thin mats that offer barely any protection from the cold seeping in through the walls, Tony dreams that it’s Peter standing at the stove instead of him, flames crawling up from all directions and slowly engulfing the boy’s body. Tony, paralysed, sits on the plastic kitchen chair, unable to even move a finger. Platinum Blonde is standing next to them and laughing. “You could have saved him,” she whispers in Wanda’s voice into his ear.
When he wakes up, Peter is staring at him in worry, and Tony realises that he probably did something embarrassing in his sleep—talked or screamed or whimpered maybe. At least the boy doesn’t say anything, just reaches out a hand and squeezes Tony’s shoulder in a display of kindness that gives Tony’s heart a stab.
Peter looks haggard and exhausted, like he hasn’t gotten any sleep at all, and it’s clear from the way he’s barely able to sit up that the lack of nutrition is getting to him again. There’s been no sign of their captors all morning—no food being pushed through the catflap. Peter begs Tony not to call for them, but then he almost takes a swan dive when he gets up to pee a few hours later.
Less than ten minutes after that, Tony is back at the stove.
*
When they return to the cell, Tony is a bit fuzzy about how much time has passed. His palms now feel more numb than painful in most places, and he knows this is bad, because it likely means third degree burns that have melted away the nerve endings. Irreversible damage—he’s read that somewhere. He regards the colour of his hands, which ranges from white to red to black, with a sick fascination, turning them over in front of his face again and again. How will I build now?
It’s only after a while that Peter’s panicked voice cuts through the rushing in his ears and he realises that the kid is trying to talk to him. He knows he needs to reassure him, but for once he doesn’t have anything to say, and his head is hurting in a vile, stabbing way that makes it hard to gather any clear thoughts.
“Later, kid,” he manages, his tongue feeling heavy and too large for his mouth. He feels himself sway while sitting―when did he get to the mat? Then he is dimly aware of Peter guiding him to lie down and staying in his field of vision until his eyes fall shut.
*
There’s a piercing scream and Tony sits straight up on the mat, his heart pounding loud and fast in his ears. A full-body shiver runs through him and he feels slightly sick when he realises that the noise came from Peter, who is sleeping beside him, caught deep in a nightmare. His irises are moving rapidly under his eyelids and he is mumbling something—Tony catches May’s and Ben's names, and then, with a stab to his heart, his own.
“Hey, Peter, it’s alright,” he soothes. When it yields no effect, he lightly touches the boy’s shoulder with the back of his hand.
Peter draws in a sharp breath and blinks his eyes open, looking at Tony in confusion. His hands move to the collar around his neck before he seems to remember not to touch it and stops just shy. “Y’ okay?” he finally mutters, sounding scared and much younger than he is.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” It couldn’t be further from the truth; the edges of Tony’s palms, where the damage is less severe, are stinging like hell and there is a weariness weighing down his core that speaks of impending illness. But Peter seems to be too out of it to catch on to his lie just now.
“I had a dream– that you– you... never mind.” Peter draws in a hitching breath and looks like he’s trying very hard not to cry, and something inside Tony clenches.
“Come here, kid,” he mumbles. “We’re gonna be alright.” He lies back down, directly next to Peter his time, and pulls him into the closest thing to a hug he can manage with his damaged hands. Another chill runs through him, and he grits his teeth in an attempt to keep his body rigid and not jostle the kid. Peter buries his face in his mentor’s shirt, and Tony feels the fabric grow wet with tears when the boy cries quietly.
“It’s alright. We’re gonna be fine,” Tony whispers again, stacking up empty words and promises until they create a soothing background against which the boy finally falls back to sleep.
*
Peter wakes up with the pervasive sensation that something is seriously wrong, even before the situation comes back to him. It takes him a few moments to track down the source of the feeling: he’s sweating. It’s cold in the cell—always much too cold—and it feels worse the hungrier he gets. He clearly shouldn’t be feeling warm enough to sweat. Then he realises that Tony’s arm is draped over him from behind, holding him protectively, and that Tony is a furnace.
“Oh no,” Peter whispers.
He extricates himself from the hug and turns around to get a full look at his mentor. Tony’s hollow cheeks are flushed with fever and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Peter’s gaze wanders down to the older man’s hands, dreading what he will find. Tony’s swollen right palm looks like a perverse modern art painting of red, black, and yellow, pus leaking between blisters and streaks of skin that look like leather.
His own hand trembling, Peter lifts Tony’s left forearm to get a view of the other hand. That’s when the engineer wakes with a jolt, sitting up and pulling his arm away in one quick movement, looking ready to strike despite his illness.
“Hey.” Peter sits back on his heels, raising his palms in a gesture of innocence. “It’s just me.”
The tension leaves his body and Tony closes his eyes for a moment. “Sorry, Pete,” he breathes.
“It’s alright,” Peter says. Then, biting his lip, he adds, “Tony, your hands. You’ve got a fever.”
“I noticed,” Tony retorts drily, lifting said hands to his face and grimacing at what he sees. “At least now we don’t have to worry about you freezing to death.”
“That’s not funny!” Peter’s voice cracks on the last word. “You could die.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s the disadvantage about kidnappings. Should have read the fine print before signing up.”
“Please,” Peter begs. “Please, just stop trying to joke, and– and act like you don’t give a shit if you live or not. I know you don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die.”
Tony gives him a weary look and seems to deflate. “What else am I supposed to do? It’s not like we’ve got a lot of options here.”
It’s the first time Tony has outright admitted the hopelessness of their situation. He just sounds bone-tired now, and Peter immediately regrets his outburst. He realises now that Tony’s jokes were meant for Peter’s benefit—not just his own—and, as transparent as they were, they did actually provide a bit of comfort.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
“It’s fine, kid.” Tony slumps further into himself, suddenly looking like he’s having a hard time staying upright. “I’ll lie down for a bit longer, if you don’t mind.”
*
“You need to drink some water,” Peter pleads. The morning has passed with Tony barely being awake, and Peter’s anxiety rising steadily along with his mentor’s temperature. Tony stopped sweating a while ago, which can only mean that he’s dehydrated now. Peter tried to give him water before, but he’d barely taken a few sips before shaking his head, visibly nauseous.
“Tony, come on,” Peter tries again, and the man groans and curls a little into himself as a full-body shiver runs through him. The chills are getting more and more violent, and even Peter taking off his shirt and draping it over Tony for a little bit of extra warmth hasn’t done anything to slow them down.
Peter runs a bit of precious water into his hand and then rubs it over Tony’s burning forehead and cheeks. That finally seems to rouse him, because moments later, he blinks his eyes open. They stand out dark against the paleness of his face, shining bright with fever.
“Where's the fire?" he mutters.
“Please, Tony,” Peter urges. “You need to keep drinking water.”
Tony seems to recognise his desperation and uses his forearms to push himself up, shifting towards the wall to support his back. Peter brings the cup to his lips and manages to coax half of it down before Tony grimaces and turns his head away. He takes a couple of deep breaths before swallowing thickly and turning his attention back to Peter.
“They give you anything to eat?” he asks.
Peter just shakes his head, dizzy when he stops. It’s not looking good for either of them.
*
Hours later, the captors still haven’t brought any food. Peter is so hungry he feels almost nauseous. Tony’s been sleeping fitfully, slipping in and out of nightmares, with Peter trying his best to ground him whenever he wakes in confusion. A while ago, Peter had to shift from sitting to lying down next to his mentor when his vision started to get fuzzy around the edges and he didn’t feel like he could keep his head up any longer.
Tony blinks his eyes open again and then starts coughing wetly. “Oh, fuck,” he says under his breath and suddenly he’s up and stumbling over to the bathroom corner, bracing himself against the wall before he’s sick. The bit of water Peter managed to make him drink splatters onto the ground, followed by painful-sounding dry heaves. Tony starts listing to the side, unable to keep himself upright any longer.
Peter makes to help him, but only gets as far as to his knees when his vision tunnels. He reaches out to the wall for support and stubbornly pushes himself up to his feet, but then the room tilts around him and his vision whites out.
Next, he’s blinking up at the ceiling and his head is pounding where it collided with the concrete floor. Tony is crouching next to him, worry clearly written on his face.
“Shit,” Peter mumbles. Even to him his own voice sounds weak.
“Yeah, that’s the right expression. Can you sit up?” Tony’s voice sounds stronger now and uh-oh, Peter knows this cut-the-bullshit tone. He nods but then has to hold on to the older man’s shoulders when he changes altitude and breathe for a while until the black fades away from his vision.
As soon as Peter is sitting stably, Tony staggers over to the door and starts shouting all kinds of obscenities that he would probably get Peter benched for days had they come out of his mouth.
It only takes a minute for their captor to appear. “Is someone hungry?” she asks sweetly. “Well, Mr Stark, you know the rules.”
“No,” Peter croaks, and repeats himself louder. “No, Tony. Please.”
Tony ignores him. “Deal,” he says through the bars.
“Fine. Bring the mutant here.” She signals the guards to open the door. Tony turns around and makes to help Peter up.
“No.” He shakes his head, ignoring the arm Tony extends towards him. “I’m not letting you do this again.”
When Tony looks at him, he’s dead serious, and there’s a fierce anger burning in his eyes. For the first time, Peter understands why there are people who are afraid of him. “Peter, I am not letting you die here. You come with me now and eat,” he says quietly, pronouncing every syllable. “Don’t make me force you. You know I can.”
Peter swallows hard, defeated, and nods.
*
Back at the stove, Tony is barely able to stay upright, and Peter can barely get a bite down at all. His mentor’s energy seemed to abruptly drain from his body the moment he got Peter in front of the plate with food. The pancakes are cloying in Peter’s stomach, despite how hungry he was only minutes ago, and when Platinum Blonde shocks him through the collar for fun, he almost throws them back up again. But he has to eat, has to force himself to, because otherwise all the pain Tony is going through is for nothing.
So he does, swallowing twice to keep everything down.
They are fifteen seconds into the third round when Tony’s legs give out under him. He lets out a low sigh, almost sounding relieved, and crumples to the ground.
*
He’s still unconscious when they take them back to the cell. Peter uses the water they have to cool down his hands. He knows it’s futile, that the infection has set in deep, but he can’t just sit there and do nothing while Tony is dying before his eyes.
He drags the mat over to where they dropped Tony, and then rolls him onto it, covering him with the shirt they’d left crumpled in the corner. Tony emits a low, painful moan, but doesn’t open his eyes. There’s blood on his chin, dribbled down from where he must have bitten his lips to stop himself from screaming in pain, and Peter rubs at it until it comes off. Tony would want his face to be clean, Peter decides, and so it’s suddenly important that it is. He keeps wetting the edge of his sleeve in water and rubbing off the dirt and sweat and blood. He doesn’t know how long he’s been squatting there when he sees his tears dropping onto Tony’s face, and only then realises he’s crying.
Peter sits down next to Tony and sobs, hugging his knees to his chest while his body shakes with the force of it.
*
It’s hours later when Tony finally stirs, whimpers in pains, and then blinks his eyes open a little.
“Hey,” Peter whispers.
“Don’ let ‘em get the weapons,” Tony orders hoarsely, slurring his words. “They can’t have, ‘em. Y’ understand?”
Peter frowns. “There are no weapons―what are you talking about?”
Tony stares at him blankly and blinks a few times. “W-water,” he rasps then.
“Okay. Here.” Holding eye contact, Peter reaches for the cup. He brings it to his mentor’s lips and manages to feed Tony a few sips.
“‘M sorry,” Tony mumbles. “Should’ve done better.”
Peter doesn’t know whether it’s directed at him or at whoever it is that Tony is hallucinating, but he tries to offer some reassurance anyway. “It’s alright, Tony. Just, just hold on until we get out of here, okay?”
Tony hums a bit. “Feels like… palladium…” he mutters. His teeth chatter with the force of a chill and Peter, at a loss for what to do, just pats Tony’s cheek before the man’s eyes glaze over and he passes out again.
*
The next time Peter tries to wake him up for water, Tony doesn’t react. Nothing yields any effect, from splashing water onto his burning face, to shaking his shoulder. His hands look worse, red and swollen until above his wrists and leaking foul-smelling pus.
It strikes Peter then that he might never wake up again.
He feels hot tears burning in his eyes and suddenly there doesn’t seem to be enough air in the room. Panting, he lets himself sink down, trying not to hyperventilate. Panic isn’t helping. He needs to get them out of here before Tony dies.
Think, Peter tells himself. What would Tony do?
Tony wouldn’t wait around and do nothing. The only reason he’s been doing this until now is because they weren’t after hurting Peter and he was trying to keep him safe, but that’s not an option anymore. Tony would use his brain, and any available tools he has.
But there are no tools. And even if there were, Peter couldn’t use them because the collar prevents him from getting out of the room.
The collar. Suddenly it’s crystal-clear to him what he needs to do.
“Okay,” he whispers. “That’s what I’ve got super strength for.”
Drawing in a deep breath, Peter puts his hands on the collar and pulls.
The world immediately dissolves into pain as the shocks travel through his body, bright lights flashing in front of his eyes. He feels himself hit the ground hard as he tries to hold on to it and pull. But it’s no use; his arms are so weak that they might as well be made from rubber. He drops them down, shaking hard while the residual pain slowly ebbs up. This isn’t working.
He thinks back to what he knows about the collar. Full metal casing. Remote-controlled and connected to the forcefield that runs through the room. Two sensors, Tony said. So maybe…
Maybe I can short circuit it, Peter thinks.
It would likely mean getting shocked and burned, which is why Tony must have decided against that option, although the thought must have occurred to him. But it might work. If he only gets off the collar, getting through the catflap and taking out Platinum Blonde and her helper would be possible—easy, even—if they can’t shock him anymore. There’s only one gun, as far as he knows.
But first, he needs a wire. Peter looks around the room, desperate for anything that might work. He considers the rusty pipe, but it’s much too short and breaking more out of the wall would definitely alert their captors. There’s nothing on their bodies; they didn’t even leave them their shoes. He briefly wishes he still had his braces.
Peter exhales and looks up, praying for an idea, when his eyes fall onto the dim, old bulb dangling from the ceiling. “Yes,” he exhales.
The ceiling light is just on the other side of the force field barrier. He’ll have to get up the ceiling and then cross over and tear it down—being shocked the whole while—without falling before he gets it off. It’s the only chance they have.
He looks at Tony, who is still lying motionless, and takes a deep breath.
Then he climbs up the wall.
*
A few minutes later, Peter tumbles to the ground, the bulb in his hands, and almost blacks out. He lies there for a few minutes, feeling his limbs twitch on the ground while his muscles seize. The residual pain is barbecuing his nerves. Stay conscious, he orders his brain. We don’t have time.
His hands feel numb and it takes him a few attempts before he tears the wire of the bulb with brute force. Please work, he prays, when he holds it in both ends and brings the endings to the sensors of his collar.
Someone cries out when the shocks hit him and pain travels through his muscles once again. The sound turns into screams of agony, seeming to come from far, far away, but then Peter dimly realises that it’s his own vocal chords making these noises. He has no idea how to stop it—seems to have lost all control over his body.
Finally, when he almost wishes that he would lose consciousness already, the pain stops.
Peter blinks and all he sees is stars spinning above him. Feeling sick, he closes his eyes again and breathes until the nausea subsides. He carefully brings his trembling hands to his neck, braces himself with a shaky inhale, and touches the collar.
Nothing.
It worked. It worked!
He grabs the device with both hands and pulls hard, until it gives a satisfying crack and breaks into two.
“P’ter?” Slowly, he turns onto his side, aching muscles screaming at him. And sees Tony, a worried expression on his face, trying to roll on to his side and push himself upright.
“You’re awake,” Peter whispers, a shaky smile spreading on his face. “Do you know where you are?”
Tony looks like he’s about to give a sarcastic response, but then seems to decide to use the little strength he has left for sitting up instead. Peter immediately pushes him back down, eliciting a frustrated groan from the injured man. “What’d you do?” he rasps.
“I shorted out the collar.” Peter explains quietly. “I’ll get us out. Stay here.”
Tony makes a suffocated noise, somewhere between a moan and a chuckle, and tries again to get an arm under himself to sit up.
Following an impulse, Peter bends down and gives the older man a quick, tight hug. “Please don’t die,” he whispers into his ear. Then, before Tony can stop him, he makes for the cat flap. It’s secured with a lock from the other side that he makes short work of. He’s feeling faint when he gets upright and has to wait for a moment for the headrush to pass, but there’s the feeling of adrenaline buzzing in his veins that seems to turn the exhaustion into desperate strength. Peter opens the door to their cell from the outside and keeps it ajar to give Tony a chance to escape in case Peter doesn’t make it back.
He finds the guard first, lying on a cot in a small storeroom and playing a game on his phone. Three minutes and a punch in the solar plexus later, his unconscious figure is tied to a metal shelf with a gag in his mouth.
Peter bends down to pick up the guy’s phone that has fallen to the ground during the one-sided fight, his heart beating fast and tight with hope. But when he gets back up, his spider senses go haywire, and then he feels the barrel of a gun on the back of his head.
“Drop it.” Peter is sure by now that he would recognise Platinum Blonde’s voice anywhere. “You have three seconds.”
Peter feels his heart sink into his stomach. He was so close. So fucking close.
The gun is shifted towards his temple and he drops the phone.
“Very good,” she says. “Now, lift your hands over your head and turn around slowly. Walk over to –”
The rest of the sentence gets lost in a grunt when something crashes into her. The gun in Peter’s temple shifts position and goes off. There’s a sharp pain in his arm, but he doesn’t hesitate a second before turning around and kicking her wrist. The weapon drops to the ground and skids away.
Then Platinum Blonde is down on the concrete floor and Peter is on top of her, and when he hits, he doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated anyone in his life like he hates her. There’s blood on her face, spilling from her nose when his fist connects with it, again and again, until–
“Peter. That’s enough.” Tony’s weak voice.
Peter stops in the middle of a puch, panting and shaking, and looks up. Tony is sitting on the ground next to the door, panting, his dark, expressive eyes full of pain. It’s only now that Peter’s brain makes the connection between the weight crashing into their captor and his mentor.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Tony huffs out a tiny, disbelieving laugh that leaves him breathless. “The phone,” he urges, nodding at the ground below the cot where Peter dropped the device.
“Yeah, I―whoa.” A wave of dizziness crashes over Peter when he gets to his feet and he almost staggers into the guard whose unconscious form is still tied to the shelf.
“Easy.” Tony comes back into focus just when a weird look passes his face. He frowns before something in his body seems to give out and he glides down the rest of the way to the floor.
“You-you did fantastic, kid. A-plus performance. Gold stars and all that. You…” He closes his eyes, takes a ragged breath, and it visibly requires superhuman strength to open them again. “You got this, kid. Just make the call. I, uhm...”
“Tony?”
The older man gives him a glassy-eyed look and slowly shakes his head. “S’ry,” he breathes. Then his eyes close. His head hits the ground even before Peter can reach him.
*
It takes Nat less than 40 minutes to fly from New York to the location in Detroit that the boy sent her. She finds Tony and Peter in the kitchen of what once was a caretaker’s apartment in an underground parking lot of a building long since demolished.
“Well, fuck,” she mumbles under her breath when her eyes fall on to the two figures.
Tony, passed out flat on the ground, seems to have lost half of his weight. His face is beyond pale, exhibiting a sickly greyish colour with only a dark flush on his cheeks. His breathing is laboured and he is shaking; Nat can feel the fever from a yard away.
The boy looks just as gaunt; Nat swears she can count every rib on his upper body. There’s blood on his right upper arm from what looks to be a bullet graze and his breaths are coming out in short, panicked gasps. But he's conscious, at least. When he looks up at her, his eyes seem to spill over, and it's a second until he is up on shaky legs and hugging her, clinging on in sheer relief.
"Natasha," he near-sobs. "I mean, agent Roma–"
"Shh," she cuts him off, withstanding the urge to wriggle out of the unexpected touch. "It's okay, Peter. You're okay now."
"But Tony..." the boy whispers. His legs seem to give out under him and Nat aids him to sit back down next to his mentor.
"I know. You’re both safe now," she repeats in what she hopes is a soothing tone. She is so much better at giving threats than reassurance. “The people who held you, where are they?”
Peter shakily points at a door to the right that’s been bolted with what looks to have been an entire kitchen appliance. “They’re not dead, just unconscious,” he explains. “Please, put them away…” He looks at her with a fierceness in his gaze that borders on delirium.
“I’ll take care of them,” Nat promises. “The quinjet is outside and medics will be here any minute. You’ll be okay.” Then, looking at the way the kid clutches Tony’s arm, she adds: “He’ll be okay, too.”
*
And here is how it ends.
Three days later, Peter is sitting on the edge of Tony’s hospital bed, flinging M&Ms into his mouth like there’s no tomorrow. He’s on his second packet already, and Tony should probably stop him before the refeeding syndrome takes a bitter revenge, but he doesn’t have the nerve to, not after what they went through.
“Gimme some,” he demands instead.
Peter frowns. “Are you allowed to eat candy yet?”
“Course I am.” It’s not even a lie, since the doctors encouraged him to eat as much light food as possible, since it makes it easier for his stomach to deal with the heavy antibiotics that are still fighting the infection.
Biting his tongue between his teeth in concentration, Peter aims and lands a row of green ones perfectly into Tony’s mouth.
“Score.” Tony lifts his bandaged hand up for a high five before remembering that’s not really possible right now. Peter’s face visibly falls when he drops it back down.
“Come on, kid,” Tony says. “Enough doom and gloom.”
Peter manages a shaky smile, but the moment is ruined, and it doesn’t really reach his eyes. Sighing, Tony shuffles to the side of the bed and nods to the space next to him.
The kid hesitates a moment, but then he climbs into the bed and lies down, using his own arm as a pillow. They stay like that for a while, silent except for the hospital sounds around them and Peter’s slightly faster-than-normal breathing. “May made pancakes this morning and I almost freaked out,” he suddenly mumbles into his elbow. “I’m never having pancakes again.”
“You don’t have to, kid,” Tony answers as calmly as he can, ignoring the guilt spiking in his stomach at the words. “But speaking from experience, I’d suggest to never say never when it comes to tasty food.”
Peter gives a small hum and scoots closer to Tony, letting his eyes slip shut. The dark circles below them are still much more prominent than Tony would like them to be. It’s barely noon and the kid looks worryingly exhausted.
It will take Peter weeks—or even months—to gain his full weight and energy back, and there is no telling yet how much lasting damage Tony’s hands have sustained. The still-feverish PTSD nightmares turn Tony’s frequent hospital naps into his personal purgatory, from which he’s woken up screaming more than once, and it doesn’t take a professional to see that Peter, too, is working through his own share of trauma. It’s going to take a hell lot of therapy for both of them.
That’s for later, though. Tony carefully wraps an arm around the kid, a reassurance for them both that the other is okay.
And for now, that’s enough.