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Patrol had started out easy that night; helping a drunk college student back to their apartment so they didn't try to drive, carrying an older women's groceries into her house, and rescuing someone's pet parakeet from a tree. All easy tasks for the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
As Peter is getting ready to call it a night and head back to the compound, Karen alerts him of a group of men harassing a lady in an alleyway. A few more minutes won't hurt! I can't not help her, he says in his head before saying out loud, "Thanks Karen! I'm on my way!"
It doesn't take long for him to get to the alley, where he finds four large men cornering a terrified young women against one of the buildings.
"Take it," the women sobs, tossing her purse away from her and to the ground. "There's not much in there, but you can have it! Please!"
One of the men chuckles darkly before saying, "That's not what we are here for, sweetheart."
"Yeah," another one of the men adds, "so why don't you just cooperate and make this easy?"
Having heard enough, Peter jumps into action. He makes quick work of slinging his webs at the first man, pulling him away from the women before webbing him against the opposite building.
"Don't worry, ma'am," Peter says, putting on his slightly deeper and more accented Spider-Man voice. "I've got this all under control!"
The women watches with wide eyes as he repeats the process with the second and third man, who yell obscenities as he secures them next to their buddy.
As Peter is about to go for the fourth and final guy, Karen says, "Peter, you're almost out of web fluid. You only have enough to either pull or restrain the last man, not both."
"Shoot, okay," Peter mumbles back to his AI before closing the short distance between him and the man. While he would prefer to let his webs do the work, he has trained with the Avengers enough to be able to fight hand on hand.
The man swings a fist at him as he approaches, but Peter effortlessly dodges it before grabbing his other wrist and pinning it behind his back. "I don't think so, Mr. Criminal," Peter chides as he moves to push him against the building.
The man lets out a grunt and curses as Peter succeeds, using the last of his web fluid to attach his hand against the building.
Peter clicks his tongue before saying, "Hopefully that'll teach you to treat women more respectfully." Ignoring the shouts of the men, he then turns around to make sure that the woman is alright.
"Ma'am, are you oka-", he starts to say, but stops when his spidey sense alerts him that something is wrong. He turns around just in time to see the last man pull a knife from his pocket and launch it at him with his free hand.
Things seem to move in slow motion as Peter watches the knife fly towards him. His spidey sense screams at him to dodge it, which he easily could have. But with the way he was positioned in front of the woman, dodging it would result in the knife hitting her. And he was NOT letting that happen.
All he can do is protectively stand in front of the women as the knife plunges into the left side of his abdomen.
He takes a step back from the impact, surprised by the lack of pain. For a second he thinks that maybe it didn't actually cut him, that maybe he got lucky and the impact was from it hitting him sideways. That's until he looks down and sees the handle sticking out of his side.
Shit, shit, shit!
His heart starts to race as he realizes that he was indeed stabbed. That's when heat and tingling starts to spread through the injured area. He needed to get out of here and deal with this.
"Uh, I think you should go home now, ma'am," Peter manages to say. His Spider-Man voice is gone now, replaced with a shaky version of his normal one.
The woman, still wide eyed, chokes out a quick thank you before taking off.
Once she is gone, Peter addresses his AI. "Hey Karen, can you call the police and get them to pick these guys up?"
"Of course, Peter," Karen responds, pausing for a moment before saying, "Done. Would you like me to inform Mr. Stark of your current situation?"
"No, no, no," Peter replies quickly. "Don't tell Mr. Stark."
This is met by, "Are you sure, Peter?"
"Yes," Peter assures her. "I'm good."
"But you're not good. There is a knife in your side-"
"I know, Karen! But I'll handle it," Peter insists, groaning as the uncomfortable heat continues to burn at his side.
While the AI doesn't seemed convinced, she drops it.
As he starts to leave the scene, the movement makes his side throb. He tries his best to ignore it as he quickly makes his way to the alley he left his backpack in earlier that night.
Thankfully, his backpack is still where he left it. Once he has freed it from the place it was webbed, he leans against the building and slides down to the ground with a thud. He yelps as the impact jostles the knife, causing pain to shoot through him.
It's okay, I'm okay, he says to himself as he tries to figure out what to do. Normally he would swing back to the compound. But seeing as he was out of web fluid, that wasn't an option. He could walk back, but that would take too long and he was in pain. So that was also a no go.
The obvious answer was to call Mr. Stark or Happy to come get him. But if he did that, they would know that he had gotten himself hurt. And that was not something that he wanted to deal with.
The only other option he could think of was to take a taxi home. But he couldn't get in a taxi dressed as Spider-Man, let alone with a knife sticking out of him. So he would have to take care of that first.
He unzips his backpack and pulls his clothes out, setting them on the ground next to him. He then looks down at the handle of the knife, cringing as he sees the blood soaking through his suit.
Peter is a smart kid; he knows that you shouldn't remove an embedded object without medical attention. He knows that taking it out will increase any bleeding, which is bad. But what choice does he have? He needs to change and he needs to get home, so it has to come out.
Just the thought of ripping it out of himself increases his already elevated heart rate.
As if she knows what he is about to do, Karen speaks up. "Peter, it's not safe for you to remove the knife yourself. I highly recommend you contact Mr. Stark."
"You're not calling Mr. Stark! I'm okay, Karen. I've got this," Peter says, his voice shaky. He then pulls his mask off, so that the AI cannot offer any more unwanted suggestions.
Not wanting to delay the unavoidable any longer, he grips the handle of the knife. With one swift motion, he pulls it out.
Whatever pain he had initially felt was a walk in the park compared to what he was feeling now. His vision goes blurry from the intensity of it, and everything disappears except for the hot, blinding pain.
He is eventually pulled back to reality by a small thought in the back of his head that says, you need to stop the bleeding.
Knowing that he should listen to the thought, he tries to calm his erratic breathing. Once he has succeeding in returning to a semi-normal breathing pattern, his vision clears and he forces himself to return to the task at hand.
He quickly pulls his suit off to reveal the stab wound, which is barely visible through the gushing crimson blood that covers it.
There was nothing in his backpack that he could use as a bandage, so instead he tears a strip of fabric off of the shirt he had already removed from the bag. He then wraps the strip around his waist, bracing himself before pulling it tight.
He hisses through his teeth as he ties it in place, the pressure causing him immense discomfort.
Hoping that his makeshift bandage will do the trick until he gets to a real first aid kit, he starts to get dressed. Thankfully he had brought a hoodie along as well, so he didn't have to wear the remains of the ripped shirt.
Now that he is presentable, he slowly gets up and swings his bag over his shoulder. He then makes his way to the street and flags down a taxi.
Once he is seated in the back of the car and has told the driver where he needed to go, he leans back in his seat and closes his eyes.
A few minutes into the drive, he can feel the blood seeping through his hoodie. He can only hope that the driver won't be able to tell between the navy color of the garment and the darkness of the car.
By the time the taxi pulls up to the edge of the compound property, Peter is starting to feel dizzy. He quickly grabs a wad of bills from the pocket of his bag and shoves them in the driver's hand before stumbling out of the car. He hopes that he didn't drip blood on the seat, but he can't be bothered to check.
The walk to the building feels like it takes forever. He almost trips and stumbles over his own feet several times. At one point he considers just laying down and taking a break, put he decides against it and pushes on.
Finally, he comes up to the building. This is where he runs into another problem.
Usually when he was trying to avoid the Avengers, he would just climb up the building and go straight to his room from the window. But along with the throbbing of his side, he is feeling very unsteady and dizzy from the amount of blood he has lost. He is almost sure the he would fall off the side of the building if he tried to climb up, and he really didn't want to hurt himself any further.
Reluctantly, he uses the door to go inside. He then takes the elevator up to the floor that houses all of the living quarters.
As he leans against the wall of the elevator, he prays that he will be able to make it to his room without being stopped by anyone. But unfortunately, as the elevator comes to a stop and the doors slide open, he can hear voices coming from the living room.
Great, he groans internally. Just great.
He looks down at the blood on his hoodie, hoping it will pass as just being wet and no one will question it. It is a dark colored material, so it isn't that obvious that it is blood.
Wrapping his arms around himself for a little extra precaution, he walks out of the elevator and into the living room. He keeps his head down as he makes a beeline to his room.
A few of the Avengers greet him as he takes quick strides towards the hall. Without stopping, he mumbles a hello in return.
Just as he thinks he is in the clear and is about to turn the corner, he is forced to stop and engage in conversation.
"Hey kid, where are you going in such a hurry?" Tony asks as he watches him from his spot on the couch.
Peter shifts uncomfortably, trying to adjust his arms to cover himself a little better before answering. "Uh, to bed?"
"To bed?" Tony asks, raising his eyebrows. "You don't sound very sure of that."
"Yeah! It's just that I, um-" Peter stammers, trying to come up with a good excuse. "I'm just really tired."
Tony doesn't seem to buy it, but he doesn't push any further. "Alright then. Nightie night, kid."
After saying goodnight, Peter moves to start walking to his room again. But as he takes a step, a wave of dizziness washes over him. In his attempt to not fall over, he extends his arms out to try and balance himself without giving any thought to what he was doing.
His efforts are in vain as he starts to topple over. But before he can fall to the ground, Natasha appears to steady him. As her hand presses against his stab wound, Peter lets out a yelp.
"Are you okay?" Natasha asks, concern evident in her voice. She doesn't give him a chance to respond before giving him a once-over with her eyes.
It doesn't take her more than a second to find the darkened fabric and feel the wetness under her hand. "Peter, you're bleeding," she says as she moves her red stained hand from his side.
"Holy shit! What happened to you, kid?!" Tony exclaims as he appears at Peter's other side, following Natasha's eyes to the blood soaked portion of his hoodie.
"It's nothing, I'm fi-," Peter says as he tries to take a step away, but ends up falling back against Natasha.
Tony stares at him. "Coming home covered in blood and barely able to stand on your own two feet is not fine."
"Tell us what happened, Peter," Natasha says, her voice gentle, but leaving no room for him to argue.
"I, um-" Peter hesitates before saying in a quiet voice, "kinda got stabbed?"
"You got STABBED? And you were planning on just waltzing off to bed like nothing happened?" Tony says in disbelief.
"I was going to take care of it," Peter says sheepishly. "I have super healing."
Tony lets out an exasperated sigh before shouting, "Just because you have super healing doesn't mean you can ignore getting stabbed! That's not how it works!"
Peter flinches at Tony's tone of voice. "I'm sorry," he says as he closes his eyes and hides his face against Natasha's shoulder.
After receiving a glare from Natasha, Tony softens his voice. "No, no. You don't have to be sorry, kid. But you can't keep stuff like this hidden from us! You've got to tell somebody the next time you get hurt."
"Okay," Peter says quietly.
"Come on," Natasha says as she gently nudges Peter forward, being careful not to touch his side. "Let's get you fixed up."
As much as he would like to protest, he knew it wouldn't do any good. And between the dizziness from the blood loss and the increasing pain, he really wasn't feeling good. So Peter lets her guide him to the medbay, with Tony following close behind.
Once they get to the medbay, Bruce quickly gets to work patching Peter up. Thankfully, none of his organs had been punctured in the process of being stabbed, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But he had still lost quite a bit of blood, resulting in the need for a transfusion.
That takes longer than Peter would have liked, so he is very happy when he is finally released. After thanking Bruce and saying goodnight to Natasha, he slowly walks to his room with Tony.
Once they reach his room, Tony lingers in the doorway as Peter happily settles into his bed.
"I can't believe your solution to getting stabbed was sleeping it off," Tony says as he watches the kid snuggle under his blankets.
"I would've used my first aid kit first," Peter says with a yawn, eyes already closed.
"Yeah, because that would have done anything," Tony says as he rolls his eyes. "I'd really rather you actually care about not bleeding to death."
"I'll remember that next time," Peter mumbles sleepily.
Tony shakes his head as he says, "Sure you will."
All he gets in response is a sleepy hum as Peter drifts off to sleep.
"Sleep tight, kiddo," Tony says gently before closing the door and heading to his lab, where he spends the next several hours updating the protocols on Peter's suit. He was going to make sure that Karen would alert him right away if the kid got injured again... just in case of a next time.
In case? Who's he trying to kid? Of course there would be a next time.