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“Peter you have thirty minutes until your curfew,” Karen warned him, already plotting a course home and throwing it up on his HUD.
It was a balmy spring evening and Peter had spent most of his patrol leisurely swinging through Queens or relaxing on a hammock made from his webs. There had been a few petty crimes he had dealt with, some grand theft bicycle, a cat stuck in a tree but, all in all, he couldn’t really complain. He loved being Spider-Man and helping his neighborhood but it was nice to have a slow day sometimes.
A scream sounded in the distance.
“Spoke too soon,” he mumbled, altering his course and picking up speed. “Can you get me directions K?”
“Of course Peter,” Karen answered, as chirpy and happy as normal, re-routing him away from his apartment and toward the sounds of discourse in the distance. When he dropped in on the scene it seemed to be a mugging in progress and Peter rolled his eyes – didn’t people have anything better to do on a random Tuesday in April? God just seriously rethink your life choices.
“I would say its knife to meet you but I’ve definitely used that pun in the last couple weeks and I don’t want to be accused of not being original,” Peter called down, making both the assailant and victim flinch and look up to where he was perched on the wall above them. “Where did even get that thing? The renaissance fair? Who robs people with a full on dagger anyway? Run out of kitchen knives?” Peter quipped, flipping down and pushing the mugger away with a well placed kick to the arm that made the man stumble back.
“This has nothing to do with you bug,” the man snarled, brandishing the weapon at Peter now and making him roll his eyes. “Don’t get in my way and I won’t have to use this on ya.”
“Spiders are arachnids actually, not bugs” Peter pointed out, shooing the stunned woman out of the alley and on her way out of any potential danger. “And how about you not stab anybody today huh? If you promise to behave I won’t web you to the wall and call the police. Sounds like a fair trade right?”
The man snarled at him with irritation. “You talk too much.”
“So I’ve been told,” Peter agreed easily with a nod. “But what do you say? Ready to give up your life of crime for the straight and narrow?”
“No,” the man grumbled and, with literally no warning, lunged forward and stabbed his knife directly into Peter’s gut.
They both stared at each other in stunned silence before Peter processed the pain with a loud ‘fuck!’.
“You motherfucker,” Peter grunted, backing away to lean against the wall, holding the knife still with one hand so as to not dislodge it. “I can’t believe you stabbed me!”
“I thought you would dodge! You always dodge!” The man said, reaching up both hands to dig into his hair. “I stabbed Spider-Man what the fuck!”
“God this is just-,” Peter grumbled using his free arm to fire webbing at the guy and secure him to the nearby dumpster. “I’ve gone three weeks without having to go to the MedBay! Three weeks! All I had to do was last one more and then I got to pick the movie at movie night for the next month! God I can’t believe it! Mr. Stark is going to be so insufferable now!”
“You could just… not tell him?” The man asked hopefully, not even bothering to struggle against the webs and Peter blew out a breath as he sank down to sit on the gritty ground – he was starting to feel a little cold and dizzy from either the blood loss or shock, he couldn’t tell which. Not that it mattered, his fierce anger overshadowed everything.
“Not an option,” Peter grunted, leaning his head back and closing his eyes against the helpful countdown timer Karen had started displaying the second Tony had entered the Iron Man armor and started jetting to him. “He already knows.” Curse the Baby-monitor Protocol! He and Ned would need to remove it again…
“He track you or something?” The man asked questioningly, head quirked to the side in obvious curiosity.
“Or something,” Peter agreed.
“That’s wack man,” he said. “An invasion of privacy. A, uh… violation of your constitutional rights as a free American!”
“Do you honestly think Tony Stark cares about an something as simple as an invasion of privacy? I’m lucky he hasn’t microchipped me yet,” Peter pointed out. Or, at least, he didn’t think Tony had microchipped him. He’d have to check that and remove it post haste if he found something.
“Dude,” knife guy said commiserating and Peter had to fight the eye roll. Of course the person who stabbed him felt remorseful now.
“I know,” Peter agreed, peering down at his side to look at where the knife was embedded into him. He was pretty good around blood as long as it wasn’t his own and, looking at the way his suit was slick and blood was beginning to pool under his thighs in a puddle made Peter lightheaded so he closed his eyes again. “He’s probably going to be pretty pissed at you by the way,” Peter warned. “He has pretty good lawyers so I wouldn’t have high hopes of getting out of this without jail time.”
The man groaned and Peter just shrugged. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time and all that – also don’t stab people and leave them to the ministrations of their helicopter mentors. Same thing really. The sound of repulsers neared and Peter braced himself – he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with this.
“I guess that we can change the ‘Days Without Incident’ sign back to zero eh Spiderling?” Tony teased as he landed in the mouth of the alley, disengaging his suit and walking over to kneel next to Peter. “You were doing so good too – your longest streak ever in fact.”
“Don’t remind me,” Peter hissed as Tony prodded around the wound carefully with a pre-gloved hand. “Can you not touch that?”
“No can do buddy,” Tony said, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “Gotta anchor it in so it doesn’t fall out on the ride back. Happy’s on his way to pick us up.”
“Oh great,” Peter groused, letting Tony lean him forward a little so he could start wrapping roll gauze around the knife. “He loves to complain when I get blood on the seats.”
“Only when you get impaled,” Tony said brightly, pulling the gauze tight almost vindictively and making Peter wince. “Wouldn’t want to deprive him now would we?”
“You could just let me bleed out and die here,” Peter suggested seriously. “Since my life is basically over now anyway.
“You’re such a dramatic little shit,” Tony groused, tying off the gauze and levering Peter up off the ground to slump into his side for the extra support. “Now say ‘goodbye’ to your friend, he won’t be seeing the real world for a long, long time,” Tony’s voice had an edge of steel as he said this, dragging Peter to the end of the alley and ignoring the muggers ‘Aw man, c’mon!” as they passed. Peter just shrugged a ‘what can you do?” and wiggled his fingers in a facsimile of a wave as he was pulled away.
Happy, to his credit, was efficient and must have already been in the area because he was quick to pull up with a surly look already cemented onto his face as he surveyed where Peter was leaning into Tony and dribbling blood onto the sidewalk in large, heavy droplets. “I already called the cleaning crew,” he told them through the open window. “They’ll be here before the police to scrub up any possible radioactive DNA.”
“Best forehead of security ever,” Tony crooned lovingly as he carefully situated Peter onto the pile of towels Happy had put into the backseat to soak up the blood and keep it off his leather seats. Happy glared at the both of them in the rearview mirror before rolling up the partition. Tony snorted in undisguised mirth.
“How you feeling kiddie?” He asked as he peeled Peter’s mask from his sweaty face. “Not going to pass out on me again right?”
“Uh…” Peter groaned, squeezing his eyes shut tight to stop the spinning and grey dots that were clouding his vision. “No promises. Sorry.” Tony just let out a put upon sigh like he expected as much and pushed Peter to lay down across the seats, grabbing one of the extra towels to press tightly around the knife and making Peter let out a whining moan at the pressure. “Yeah I might pass out,” he said faintly as his vision started to tunnel.
“Go on then,” Tony said, running a hand through Peter’s damp curls and smoothing them away from his face. “At least you don’t sass me when you’re unconscious.” Peter felt the man lift his legs to slid a few wadded up towels underneath… like that would actually help keep him awake.
“Rude,” Peter grumbled before losing his grip on reality – he trusted Tony to take care of things for now.
“I hate this movie,” Peter grumbled groggily, as he pulled himself awake some time later. He was lying in one of the beds in the MedBay, attached to a blood transfusion and with a thick padding of gauze on his abdomen. Tony, seated next to him and munching on popcorn, just sent him a shit eating grin and held up the whiteboard that had been hanging in his workshop displaying ‘Days Without Incident’ with a large 0 written under it in obnoxious red ink.
“This is such bullshit,” Peter said petulantly, picking at the tape holding the IV in place. “I can’t escape! Go watch your garbage movie somewhere else.”
“Excuse me you brat,” Tony said imperiously. “The Breakfast Club is a cult classic thank you very much and besides,” he continued, offering Peter the bowl of popcorn, “someone clearly has to educate you on good movies.”
“I’m going back to sleep,” Peter said, flicking a kernel of popcorn playfully at his mentor (and missing damn – he must be on drugs) and letting his tired eyes slip closed again.
“Sore loser,” he heard Tony tease as he fell asleep and that did it. When he won their next bet they were marathoning the whole Star Wars series from beginning to end, including all of the Clone Wars and the Mandalorian, and he didn’t care what Mr. Stark said.