Work Text:
In hindsight, he had sorta done this to himself.
MJ was always talking about his dedication to the city as Spider-Man, saying that he tried too much and too hard all the time, never letting up, never letting go.
Aunt May often worried about how he was taking care of himself, how he was eating and sleeping, and if he needed to do laundry, her machines were always open.
They had no idea how bad it actually was; his enhanced healing kept him looking pristine through malnourishment and sleep-deprivation, to the point where he could pull an all-nighter and not even Mary Jane would notice—but God, did he feel it all too much.
He knew he needed to sleep more, eat more, drink more, just pay more attention to Peter than to the city, but he was on a roll! Fisk was going down, and all he had to do was collect the evidence and deliver it to Yuri—and this time, the probability of error was at an all-time low.
He just couldn’t seem to… locate the evidence.
Fisk kept a careful record of all his dealings. The man was way too organized to not to, but he was also a mastermind secret-keeper.
Where in the world was that one file!?
It was just one file, one silly little half-paged document—Peter didn’t even know what was on it, just knew that the men he took down were very concerned about it getting in the wrong hands—which meant Spider-Man’s hands, which meant that they were in a world of trouble, which meant that a single non-digitized, hard-copied piece of paper could be the key to cleaning up the streets.
So yeah, he didn’t exactly sleep for four days. Doctor Octavius would have been upset with Peter for missing so much work, except that Thanksgiving was this Thursday, and Otto had given them both the entire week off! Paid vacation!
At least, he hoped it was paid; he hadn’t exactly asked, too consumed with finding that missing file and jumping for joy that he actually had the Peter’s-life-time to spare for extra-curricular activities—uh, Spider-Man duties.
This basically meant swinging around the city practicing quips and sarcasm as he beat up bad guys and attempted to find a single floppy piece of paper—at least, he thought it was floppy… and on one single piece of paper…
He was narrowing it down and getting close though!
People were afraid of him, even Fisk’s men—he blamed JJ for that—and normally, that’d bum him out spectacularly, but in this case, it was proving to be helpful.
Interrogations were running smoothly.
He didn’t normally stop to talk to these goons—in-game chatter overlaid atop battle scenes didn’t count as stopping to talk—and he’s learning that they don’t particularly want to get beaten unconscious—who knew, right?
It seemed that some would rather spill the tea than have Spider-Man torture them—as if he’d stoop to that, but JJ has recently made that seem plausible of Spider-Man, so he was just gonna roll with it—and these goons have either been fooled by Fisk’s genius way of safeguarding his secrets or Peter’s been fooled and led on a wild goose chase around the city.
Either way, Peter was removing groups of Fisk men, sometimes undercover in the dead of night and sometimes entire bases—productivity for the win!—and the men have collectively said that a loophole is the way to take down the Big Guy, and that said loophole was one single solitary sentence amidst a paragraph on one single solitary piece of paper that had already been deleted from all existing digital records.
But paper files are a lot harder to keep track of than digital ones, which has Fisk distracted trying to find it, which means Spider-Man has to find it first. And he was running low on time.
But he was also running low on sleep. He’d stopped for two subs and a liter of Coke to refill his health bar, knowing he needed his strength and remembering his promise to MJ about taking care of himself—“Pete, it only takes you five minutes to down an entire pizza and gallon of milk. Please, just take the five minutes to care for yourself? Okay?”—it actually took him eight minutes if he didn’t want to choke and die—and Peter Parker always kept his promises—well hold on a sec, not always. He tries so desperately hard but sometimes he fails and breaks the promises, but he always tries.
Peter Parker never goes down without a fight, and that included fighting to keep the promises he makes.
However, MJ had never said anything about sleep—he knew very well that it was implied, along with showering, laundry, and brushing his teeth—and he didn’t want to lose time or have the trail go cold, so he relied on semantics for that loophole.
When he woke up tangled in his own webs, hanging upside-down by the side of a building in an alley that he didn’t immediately recognize, not immediately remembering how he got there, at two o’clock in the afternoon, he knew he shouldn’t have taken that loophole.
Um, help?
~
It didn’t matter if his genetic code was different from a human’s, his brain was almost the same, and he too needed the break sleep provided—but that was all it was, a break.
He would take that break after he found that file and Fisk was being processed for the trial of the year.
His lead was the FAST facility: Fisk’s Anti-Spiderman Training facility—he just can’t get that hyphen right—or was it the Federal Association of Software Taskforce facility—or was it the Free Acceptance into State Training facilities—or was it one of the other three acronyms for places around this city?
It was Fisk’s data, so it was probably the first option. But it was Fisk’s data, so it was probably not the first option.
He had his work cut out for him—and he was pretty sure he accidentally made one of those acronyms up anyway.
He hadn’t yet chosen where to go first—he’ll admit, he was taking a break and scrolling through his social media feed, yawning and rubbing his blurry eyes—when he heard people below him talking. He was perched on a street lamp around 10 o’clock at night, so no one would see him through the bright lights and alert the cops, or worse, fangirls.
“Yo, are you okay?” One of the people below him was a girl, and she was out of breath—it seemed like the two had been running and chose to stop beneath a light. Smart move, especially in this area. Why were they here this late at night, though?
The other girl nodded, bent over with her hands on her knees, catching her breath, too, “Did we lose them?”
The first one stood up, looked over her shoulder, “Yeah, think so, didn’t expect to run into Fisk guys out this late.”
Fisk guys? He perked up, blinked a couple of times to clear his eyes, and peered through the lights to hear better—yeah, yeah, he knew how that sounded.
Peter had only half-heartedly been listening, trying to make sure they were okay, but also distracted by his fans on twitter, well, until he heard that.
The second replied as they began walking away, “Thugs trying to rob us? Yes. Fisk guys chasing us away from there? Not at all…”
Hmmm…
So Fisk’s men were out late, guarding something. Obviously a secret. Perhaps they’re operating under the cloak of night because it’s a transfer that needs to be kept as hush-hush as possible—or maybe someone important is paying that location a special visit?
He needed to check it out.
Quickly and quietly—isn’t he always quiet though? His web-shooters barely make a sound and he always sticks his landings—he zipped and swung between buildings, on the lookout for groups of people, of any size. He didn’t know which direction they’d be, so he equipped his long-range sensor—and spotted them immediately!
Two blocks down, on the… seventh floor? If they were on the seventh floor, how did those women get close enough to be scared away?
He yawned and focused on the men moving, forgetting about the women, and point jumping between light poles to hurry up and get there.
There were ten men it looked like—no, wait, his eyes were fuzzy again, so he blinked and an eleventh appeared—and this was yet another unfinished construction site—surprise, surprise—with unfinished walls. He went ahead and flung webbing between this building and its neighbor in case he knocked anyone off again.
The first time he did that, it was an accident, and he nearly had a heart attack, thinking he’d killed the guy, but managed to dive catch him with webbing just in time.
Working while he had this lack of sleep thing going on, he didn’t think he could take another scare like before. He’d probably just die on the spot.
Guess I’ll die, he shrugged.
He knew he was exaggerating and being dramatic, but that was all part of his charm—and he was proud of it, too—just the same as stumbling up the wall, crawling on all fours, and still managing to embarrass himself by falling out of the sky in front of these eleven guys because his brain disengaged and he stopped paying attention to what he was doing—God, he needed to sleep.
Luckily, he fell behind some boxes, so the men were alerted, but not aware of his presence yet—the gasps and collective huh’s he heard were hilarious—but his eyes were still blurry and he wasn’t sure which way was up or down—man, getting used to crawling on walls and ceilings made figuring out basic directions more difficult than it should be—but the men were getting closer, his spidey-sense was warning him of imminent danger—BULLET—and with no hesitation, he leaped onto the ceiling right as the boxes exploded from the shotgun—Holy cow, why did this guy have a shotgun!?
He had been spotted, obviously, so he scurried along until he was on the side of the building again, out of the line of fire—“Where’d he go!?”—“Did you see him?”—and blinked away more blurriness.
Okay, he’ll admit, going four days straight with no sleep was not a smart decision. He felt like he wasn’t even sure what was going on right now.
He couldn’t sense the men anymore, where were they?
Oh, he was facing the wrong direction—he turned around, crawled up, and they came back into the scope.
This is ridiculous! Get it together, Pete!
He shook his head to clear it, inhaled deeply to calm himself, and opened his eyes to try this again.
The men were close, some scoping out the boxes where he’d landed, some were climbing the steps to the next level to see if he went up, some were walking toward the opposite—his spider-sense went off—a man was approaching the edge of the building where he was crouched—he would be seen for sure!
But Peter was in the middle of the wall, and he couldn’t crawl anywhere fast enough, so he prepped himself for a stealth takedown.
When the gun breached the edge, Peter shot a web at the hands gripping the firearm so as to grab both the guy and the gun at the same time—and missed, his web latching onto a beam above their heads—great, just great, he was an absolute moron. His reputation just took a hit worse than anything JJ could serve.
The man cursed, aware that Spider-Man was below him, alerting the others who were all too eager to engage the wall-crawler. Guns were aimed, triggers were pulled, and bullets sped through the air straight towards him in a blink of an eye—but his eyes blink faster.
“Woah,” he dodged upward out of the way—“A little trigger-happy there, ain’t you fellas?”—following the web, and perching on the beam, “I know they say to always shoot your shot, but buddy, you shouldn’t have!”
Crickets? Yeah, he shoulda slept on that one.
The rain of bullets followed him, making distance combat challenging. He would need to get in close, disarm a guy, do a little aerial combat up close instead.
And that’s what he went for, zipping down to punch a guy in his face, knocking him back and startling the others. For a split second everything was calm and he quickly surveyed the scene, calculating his next move in but a millisecond.
Then he backflipped and kicked a crowbar-wielding goon into the air, snatched him with a web, and slammed him onto the side of the building, webbing him to the wall and out of commission.
…Well, that’s what he intended to do anyway. But that’s not what happened.
A bullet cut straight through both lines of the webbing connected to the man’s chest, relieving the tension in the cords. His senses should have caught that long before it happened, but alas, they needed to recharge—Sleep! Who knew right!?—so having not caught that little detail, he yanked on air, unbalancing himself, and sending himself plummeting to the concrete below—at least he landed on someone!
His senses must have up and abandoned him, lagging four frames too slow or something, because while he saw his face heading straight for the concrete and tried to react to it by throwing his arms down to flip away, his webbing said otherwise.
The cord still connected to his right web-shooter hadn’t fully disconnected but instead tangled itself around that steel beam behind his head, and his spidey-parkour that should have saved his face instead yanked his right arm back with his own force.
He was still Spider-Man though and was able to successfully react and still save his face from kissing concrete, but he just had to land on his feet like some ordinary cat. Still, he didn’t land where he expected to land and hadn’t appropriately gauged the goons. The butt of a gun slammed into his face, splitting his lip and breaking his nose.
It felt like everything that could go wrong did go wrong—what was that? Murphy’s law?
He hadn’t had a mission go this bad this quickly in years!
Thankfully, the webbing detached from behind him just in time to dodge an incoming punch to the face—and his spidey-sense was warning him of an attack behind him, so he slid under the men in front of him, between their legs, and used webs to tangle them up, tripping them and halting all gunfire.
Before he could take pride in that, he was hit from behind, two interlocked fists hammered down onto his neck like the slamming of a car—great, a brute. His shoulder popped, his legs buckled beneath him, and his neck snapped back in whiplash.
His spidey-sense had officially abandoned him—in all honesty, though, he brought this on himself.
He stumbled forward, significantly dazed, back hurt, and brain turned to red hot mush—it’d been a hot minute since he’d dislocated a shoulder, and his spine hurt so bad he seriously thought it might be snapped—but in his stumbling, he twisted—Ha! Not broken! BooYah!—and saw the big guy swinging again—but Peter’s arm was numb, his legs were trembling, and he couldn’t dodge in time.
He was smacked, fist ramming into the left side of his back and sending him over the side of the building—don’t stand so close to the edge next time, Peter, you dumbass—to be immediately caught by the webs he strung up earlier.
Genius move, Parker! Always knew you had it in you!
He took a moment to breathe, his lungs stuttering in his chest from those two massive back-to-back blows. As his lungs expanded, he could feel the broken ribs shift and the bruises already starting to form. Three? Four ribs broken? Why did it have to be the ribs? It’s always the ribs…
But he didn’t have the time to just lay there: the men were gathering at the edge of the building looking down on him, aiming their guns—firing their bullets!
He tried to dodge, but this was his sticky webbing intended to capture the bad guys—instead, he’d captured himself! He couldn’t move much, but he could move some—he knew the tensile strength of his webbing was incredibly high but was it stronger than his muscles?
His left shoulder burned deep and awful, but he couldn’t concentrate on that, instead, using his right arm with all his strength to rip the webbing apart. Luckily, he was far enough below that the bullets weren’t hitting him—Aim much? Instead, they were tearing apart his webbing, bit by bit, until his pulling and yanking snapped it entirely, no longer supporting his upper back, and dropping him to hang upside-down from the webbing still stuck to his legs and back.
Soon, that wasn’t even enough as the bullets sliced through more and more, and he began to fall. He tried to slow his descent by shooting a line up to a rafter, the side of the building, anything—success! He began pulling himself up with his one good, free arm—until a bullet snapped that cord too, redirecting his momentum into a spiral, twirling in the webs, tangling himself up in his own design.
He was dizzy. Head spinning and eyes blurring, he could no longer see the men firing at him, and his sensors showed that they were leaving—assuming him dead perhaps?
It was an absolute miracle that he hadn’t been hit by a single bullet—was his last thought before the butt of a rifle slammed itself into the back of his head, knocking him out to hang near the third story of an unfinished construction site.
~
When he woke, he didn’t immediately remember where he was or what had happened, but he knew he was in pain and that breathing was difficult. Lost a fight was the obvious first thought, and he stuck with it, trying to figure out how to get out of his webbing.
If this was his normal webbing, it would dissolve after two hours in the appropriate conditions, but he’d used his sticky webbing last night, designed to make sure criminals didn’t go anywhere for extended periods of time. It still dissolved after a while—after 24 hours, Pete, you idiot—but he’d be waiting upside-down until then.
He remembered what had happened now, and it was surprising that nobody has seen him like this, nobody reported him to the police or anyone. Sixteen hours—give him a break, his suit had gadgets, remember? His HUD showed the time in the upper right-hand corner (and he’d installed that after he almost lost his internship from tardiness) and it was just after two—sixteen hours was plenty of time for the police to show up, or for his enemies to capture him and finish him off.
He most likely lost his target with that half-baked stunt. If he was lucky, the trail only went cold. If he was unlucky, Fisk destroyed the evidence for good. He’d get back in there and keep on it until he knew for sure, but he really needed to go home first—his bed wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was calling his name like an angel called souls to heaven.
He tried twisting around, seeing if there were any holes in the webbing—but his shoulder igniting his back and brain on fire and dragging him the opposite direction of heaven reminded him of how horribly he’d lost last night. He barely clamped his mouth shut in time to stifle the scream when he jostled it.
That it was still displaced was surprising, considering that it wasn’t a break, and his super-healing normally realigns dislocations so that he doesn’t have to do so manually. He must have been sleeping on it wrong, forcing it in one position, and keeping it from healing.
That wasn’t good. Brains think for themselves, but bodies don’t, and neither does super-healing, which meant that whatever healing his body had attempted on his shoulder for the last sixteen hours wasn’t good.
He’d probably have to go see MJ…
Awkward…
Or a hospital, a hospital would work too, if he could find a nurse or doctor who didn’t ask him to remove his mask.
But that was the worst-case scenario! In all likelihood, he’d just need to pop it back in, and it’d be all good. His healing probably exhausted itself on his ribs—which didn’t hurt anymore, yay!
He just needed to take a good look at it—and where did he know was a full-sized body mirror? That’s right, home at his apartment, exactly the same place the angel was calling him—he just had to get out of these blasted webs first.
If he called to a stranger to help, they wouldn’t even be able to reach him as far up as he was, so they’d have to get a ladder, or most likely, they’d just call the fire department or the police, and then what would they do? They wouldn’t even be able to cut these webs! That was the whole point of making them sticky!
He would need to just wait eight more hours…
Upside-down…
Hanging like a criminal…
Great…
At least he could catch up on his sleep!