Work Text:
“Hey, Thor, you good, man?”
My Spider-Sense flares without warning as Thor spins, alarm bells ringing in my head instantly. My body instinctively begins to react, moving before my conscious mind even registers the signal. But Thor is lightning.
Christ, has he always been this fast?
My attempt to dodge still saves my life. Instead of hitting me in the solar plexus and caving my chest in, Mjolnir hits me in the shoulder, dislocating my arm and breaking my collar bone. The force of Thor's swing also sends me flying away from him, into and through the decades-old brick wall of this old factory. Contact with the wall cracks a couple of ribs. Contact with the ground outside cracks another, and I end up in one of New York's famously charming back alleys. I've fought the Hulk before. Hell, I've fought Thor before. This is still the hardest single hit I've taken in my career. Clearly he'd been holding back the last time. I struggle valiantly(if I do say so myself) to get my feet under me, and peer blearily back through the hole my unexpected exit just created. Thor is still standing where he had been, but when he sees my head pop up, he begins to walk towards me. Slowly. Leisurely. Like he's got all the time in the world.
My brain may have been rattled around a bit during the flight, but it still takes me approximately no time at all to come up with a plan of action. I turn tail and run. Well, I hobble. Every step I take sends shooting pain through my chest and right shoulder, but I ignore it. I'll be hurting a lot more if Thor catches up with me. I lift up my relatively undamaged left arm and depress the trigger on my web-shooter, trying to fire a web-line at the building nearest me. Instead, I fire a glob of webbing that falls immediately to the ground, and the web-shooter begins to make sputtering sounds. Great, it was damaged when I got knocked through the wall, and my other arm is pretty much out of commission. “Parker Luck,” I mumble under my breath.
My Spider-Sense begins to buzz again. I glance behind me. Thor hasn't appeared in the hole I made yet, but the steadily increasing buzzing in my head tells me that I'm about to run out of time. I glance ahead again. No time to get out of this alley and around the corner, and no web-shooters to swing away. I've got exactly one chance to get away. Not much of a chance, but my cup does not runneth over with other options. I bend my knees, ignoring again the agony the movement creates in my chest and shoulder, and jump. Spider-strength gives me a vertical leap that puts any basketball player in the world to shame. I leap 45 feet straight up, which leaves another 10 feet or so between the top of this building and me. Without pause, as I near the top of my parabola, I reach out with my left hand, stick to the wall and simply yank myself the rest of the way up. I arc lazily over the edge of the roof and collapse upon landing, trying as hard as I can not to scream. Wouldn't be much point in breaking line of sight if I immediately reveal my location verbally, now would there?
I lay on the roof, attempting to catch my breath and figure out my next steps. And then, a voice like thunder, a voice that can command hurricanes, booms from down below, “ARACHNID!” You know, Thor is one of the only people I've met who gets that right. It's funny. I've always thought Thor's mind was underrated. It's so easy to dismiss him as a meathead, but he isn't. His intelligence is simply focused on a few things, like running Asgard, and squashing guys like me. And right now, it's really focused on that last bit. On the other hand, my mind is having trouble focusing on anything right now. If I don't get it together, and fast, it'll never focus on anything again.
I brace my right arm against the ground, holding my wrist with my left hand, take a couple of deep breaths, and rotate my torso to the right. My dislocated shoulder pops back into place, and I groan as quietly as I can. Slowly, gingerly, I rise to my feet. It's a terrible idea to try to swing with one arm, especially an arm that's already injured, with a broken collarbone and at least 3 broken ribs, but I don't see that I have much choice. I orient myself. I'd like to head to Avengers tower, but that would require either leaping directly over Thor's helmeted head, or taking an indirect route on an injured arm, neither of which is an option I'm keen to take. Instead, I face the opposite direction, towards the Baxter Building. If anyone can figure out what's going on with Thor, it's Reed. I just hope he's not in the Negative Zone, or in space, or otherwise occupied. Well, only one way to find out.
Of course, the universe can't just let me escape Scot-free. As I prepare to leap off the roof in the direction of the FF's HQ, the building under me rumbles in time with a huge explosion behind me. Aw, man. Let me guess, – “SPIDER-MAN, FACE ME, OR LET THESE INNOCENT MIDGARDIANS PERISH. IT IS YOUR CHOICE” Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected. I sigh. I turn around, limp over to the edge of the roof, and look over. Thor is standing in the middle of the street, pulling Mjolnir out of the wreckage of a burning cab. I take inventory. I've got one web-shooter, a bunch of broken bones, and one hell of a headache. Oh, and one other thing I've got? Great power. Put that way, the only thing I don't have is a choice. I leap down, landing on a street light overlooking the car fire.
“Thor, buddy, I hate cabs in this town as much as anyone, but I don't think putting a hammer through the engine helps anyone!”
AN: Just a random shower thought I couldn't resist writing out. I'm pretty happy with the inner monologue, but the quip at the end just would not come out well. Oh well. No idea if I'll write any more of this.