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“It’s like my senses were dialed up to eleven.”
In hindsight, Tony should have seen this coming. He knows the kid’s hearing is sensitive, sees him recoil because of it on an almost daily basis due to a certain five-year-old girl who loves her big brother, but is also a five-year-old girl. Sure, she’s good for her age, but she’s still a toddler and toddlers tend to pitch fits and scream and cry sometimes, some more than others. Morgan was good for her age, though, and Tony was proud of that. She hadn’t been much of a whiny baby, either, apparently preferring to look around and see everything. May had told Tony when the Parkers had finally gotten to meet her about how Peter was the same way as a baby.
It only made him prouder.
“Hey, Metalhead, zone back in! We’re in the middle of a battle here!” a voice cuts into his ear.
“Oh, I’m sorry, birdbrain,” Tony rolls his eyes. “thought you were going stealth mode for this one?”
“Change of plans!”
“Uh huh,” Tony replies sarcastically. “Kid, you okay?”
“I-oof-yeah, I’m fine, Mister Stark!” Peter replies, then Tony hears the thwip-thwip of Peter’s webshooters and then a flash of red flips through the sky and lands right next to him where he’s standing on a rooftop, keeping watch.
“Showoff.” Tony grumbles, and Peter laughs.
“Well, hello to you, too, Mister Stark!” Peter replies, then, lower, he starts mocking Tony. “ Gee, hi, Spider-Man, so glad you can make it, you’re so cool, you’re awesome . . .”
Tony smacks him upside the head and Peter just laughs again.
“So it’s all clear down there?”
Peter nods, and he swears he can see the smile on his face through the mask. “Yep!”
“Yeah, I think we’re about all cleared up down here, too.” Natasha says, and a string of confirmations from everyone says that everyone is okay and accounted for, and that New York isn’t being attacked by killer robots once again anymore. At least it had been drones this time, and not evil robots with minds of their own or something like that.
Tony barely catches it as he looks away from Peter, but the kid flinches for a fraction of a second. But then it happens again.
And again.
And again.
Tony turns his comm off so only the kid can hear him. “Peter?”
“Do you hear that?” Peter asks, flinching again. “What is that?”
“I’m not–hear what? I don’t hear anything.”
“Ow!” Peter yelps, his hands coming to cover his ears, which is useless for the fact that the mask is covering them already. “You don’t hear that?!” Peter asks loudly.
“No,” Tony says calmly, trying to stay that way. “what is it?”
“I-what?!” Peter says, doubling over. “I can’t hear you!” he flinches again and falls to his knees. “I can’t-Mister Stark?!”
Tony flips his faceplate up, starting to panic now. “Peter?!”
“OW!” Peter cries out and falls on his side. He pushes his hands down farther although it does nothing to help Peter with the pain he’s clearly in. Where his ears sit under the mask, the fabric is slowly turning a darker shade of red.
Tony jumps out of the suit, knowing it’s stupid, vaguely hearing FRIDAY send out a message to the other Avengers, telling them to keep a closer watch because Tony got out of the suit.
Tony flips Peter over and grabs his hands and moves them so he can take the mask off and inspect the kid’s ears.
Peter’s face is really red, ears bleeding and – was that his nose and eyes bleeding, too? Or maybe Peter’s crying and his face is red and the blood from his ears and face is mixing together. Yeah. That’s what it is, Tony determines. Phew.
Peter’s eyes are also really spaced out, pupils way uneven.
He hears a clank of metal from behind him and then it runs towards him. He doesn’t even go on the defensive because he’s too busy listening to Peter choke and cry, offering comforts Peter can’t hear.
And that’s when it hits him.
“Tones! What’s wrong with–”
“Did any of those drones have the ability to manipulate sound? Or do anything with sound for that matter?”
“Um . . .” Rhodey thinks. “actually, yes, I think so. I’m not sure what it does, but–”
“Do you remember the dog whistle incident?”
Something dawns on Rhodey’s face. “Crap. Okay. Um.” Rhodey says, then taps into his comms. “Guys. The sound robots. Destroy all of them. Every last one.”
The dog whistle incident hadn’t been as bad as this. And they hadn’t even known that Morgan had had a dog whistle until Peter came over and she wanted to show him her new “toy”.
Tony snaps back to reality when Peter starts gasping harder and spacing out more, and Tony swears he watches the vision go black in Peter’s eyes as the kid grips both of Tony’s hands in his little ones where they’re laid on his stomach now with not even half of the strength that he should have.
“Chill out, buddy, help’s on the way.” Tony says, but Peter can’t hear him.
“The eye vessels. Jeez.” Rhodey says suddenly, motioning towards Peter’s face.
Tony nods and looks at Rhodey. “He needs to be in the hospital right the heck now.”
“I called for help,” Rhodey tells him. “I kind of figured you wouldn’t want to take him in the suit like this.”
“Absolutely not.”
Peter goes limp in his hands all of a sudden. Tony looks back down in horror. “Peter? Peter?!”
“I got it.” Natasha says. “Well, him.”
“I hate sonokinesis.” Wanda says, accent thick and slightly angry.
“He should be okay?” Tony asks. Apparently, Rhodey has somehow turned his comm on speaker.
“Sonokinesis means he can manipulate sounds mentally.” Wanda says. “I don’t know if there was a specific target.”
“Peter has advanced hearing.” Tony says. “Like, really advanced. As in, I don’t know how he sleeps in the city.”
“He could have been manipulating the robots we found leading up to him with sound energy,” Wanda says. “most of the ones Natasha and I hadn’t killed already fell after we, um . . .”
Tony nods. “Yeah, okay.”
“It’s Peter.” Wanda says.
“You can’t blame us, Tony.” Natasha agrees.
“Oh, I don’t.” Tony replies. “I’m glad it was you two, and he should be, too.”
“Yeah, ‘cause nobody wants to deal with a pissed off Tony Stark.” Rhodey chuckles, and Tony just looks at him. “What? It’s true.” he shrugs.
“Mmph,” Peter. His head falls to the side, and his eyes open. Tony takes a hand and gently cups Peter’s face so they can see each other. “M’ser S’ark?”
“Hey, kid. How ya feeling?”
Peter thinks for a minute. “Blegh,” he decides on. “m’ head ‘urts.”
“I’ll bet, buddy. Just hang tight, help is on the way.”
“C’n I sit up, please?”
Tony’s hesitant, but he should probably clean up Peter’s face anyway. He looks at Rhodey, who nods.
“Yes, if you sit up against this wall over here.”
“‘uh?”
“Speak louder, Tony.” Rhodey tells him. “His ears are probably ringing like crazy.”
“Right,” Tony says, then grabs Peter under his armpits. “Up we go, buddy.” Tony’s just glad he doesn’t have that awful look in his eyes anymore and the bleeding has mostly stopped. Words like seizures flash through his mind.
He sets Peter up against the wall and sits right down next to him so he doesn’t fall sideways, and the kid brings his legs up to his chest and lays his head down on his knees, breathing heavily.
“That wasn’t fun.” he says.
“I bet it wasn’t.” Tony agrees, rubbing his back. Peter looks at him.
“WHAT? Oh hey, Mister Stark.”
Tony chuckles. “Yeah, I think you’ll be okay, Underroos. But that’s for Bruce to determine, not me.”
“I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU JUST SAID, BUT I THINK I’M GOING TO TAKE A NAP NOW.”
Tony laughs again.
“You do that, kid.” Tony says, pulling Peter closer to him. “You do just that.”