Chapter Text
All Peter can process is white hot agony going through him.
His lungs- okay, they are probably still there. Those are pretty hard to lose, but something feels wrong with them. With his entire rib cage, honestly. He can’t breathe properly, his breathing catches and stutters and comes out in a god awful rattle, and he can’t move.
He tries to. He tries lifting his arms, his legs, even settling for trying to lift his finger. But every part of him feels full of sand, holding him to the Earth.
He’s cold. And he’s tired. So, so tired. And it’s not good, he knows that. He had stupidly skipped out on the first aid training Tony had insisted he took, and even though he doubted that knowledge would do him any good at this exact moment, he knows exactly what this is. There’s a special kind of intuition you gain when you throw yourself at big scary bad guys for fun- and that’s when you can figure out you are badly injured, and you know you’re about to go into shock.
It takes every bit of strength he has, but when he opens his eyes, everything is dark. Literally. He’s surrounded by rubble somewhere, someplace, and his ears are frantically working to pick up on the sound of rescue as he tries and fails to lift any part of his body.
Everything sounds like it’s muffled, like he has his hands clapped over his ears. But that’s not possible, because Peter realizes the reason he can’t move his body is because he’s trapped. Heavy concrete was pressing into him, squeezing his lungs, his legs, his everything. The building he had been casually standing in moments previous had collapsed on top of him.
Well, if he had a nickel.
But this time around, there’s no strength in his body to get it off. He feels said strength pouring out of him, quite literally. He’s laying there in a pool of his own blood, pouring from what he thinks is a gunshot wound. Or maybe a knife wound. Maybe both, who really knew?
He wants to go to sleep. But he holds on. He has to hold on. He knows once he closes his eyes, there’s a good chance he isn’t going to open them again. And he is Spiderman. He can do this. He can stay alive just a little longer. Long enough for the others to find him, he has to, he has to.
His hearing goes in and out, a radio trying to pick up on a signal. At first, he hears nothing beyond the destroyed building around him settling, concrete cracking and shifting. There’s running water somewhere distant.
And then he can hear the telltale sound of jet propulsors. The booming sound came in and out, and he hadn’t realized his eyes had closed again until he was trying to open them again. But this time, he doesn’t have it in him.
All around him, he can hear frantic arguing. Someone is barking orders, someone else is panicking. Only bits and pieces of the words come to him.
“-out of my way Rogers-”
“- going to find him. Take it ea-”
“-this. FRIDAY, scan the a-”
“-over there-”
“-Kid? Peter?! Are you th-”
Tony.
Tony was here.
Tony would find him.
His eyes slowly close.
When they open again, everything is much, much brighter than it was before. He has feeling back in his fingers, his toes, and maybe if he tried enough, he could probably lift his arm. There’s some sort of mask on his face, and he feels his breathing pick up as he looks around. The ceiling above him is going by fast, too fast, and he wonders if he’s either dizzy from the blood loss or they’re moving.
He reaches up, a motion so simple and yet it sends pain through him so intensely he feels his entire body lock up. His next breath catches, and he’s sent into a coughing fit that aggravates his (most certainly broken) ribs. Still, he tries to rip that mask off, to figure out what is going on and get his bearings.
A familiar face comes into view. It’s Tony, his face near white with worry, his eyes wet and red. He has blood smeared over his face, and Peter has the feeling it isn’t his.
“Kid, you gotta calm down. You’re at the tower, you’re gonna be fine.”
But Peter can’t calm down. The pain is nearly suffocating him, and now that he can move again, he’s writhing with it, even as his ribs protest with every movement.
“Kid.” Tony’s voice is frantic, desperate, insistent. Peter is only hurting himself, making things worse in his panic, and they both know it.
Peter feels two strong hands clasp down on his shoulders. His eyes fly open and meet Tony’s, and he realizes Tony is talking, but everything is quiet. Peter’s ears are ringing as pain flares from somewhere in his midsection. He can feel his heart beat drumming insistently in his ears. A steady and strong thud, thud, thud that is near deafening. It’s good he hears that, and not the pitiful near whimpers and whines of pain he’s making.
He’s Spiderman. An Avenger. A hero.
But right now, he’s nothing more than a kid.
His hearing comes back to him with a woosh that takes the breath right out of him, and he must’ve said something, did something, because Tony’s attention is back on him.
Peter is talking, he realizes. He couldn’t control the words as they tumbled out of him.
“Dad.”
Tony has stopped moving. The fear in his eyes is seemingly from something else entirely now, but Peter can’t process it. He just keeps going, pleading. “Dad please- make it stop. It hurts- it hurts - please-”
Tony’s mouth opens and closes. Of all the things he was expecting from Peter, it’s clear this wasn’t even on his list. But right now, that breakdown can wait. Because Peter was in fucking pain, and he was going to make it stop.
“Can we get the kid some god damn pain medicine over here?” He’s yelling to a person Peter can’t see.
A moment later, it all goes black all over again.
-
When Peter opens his eyes again, alot is different.
For one, it doesn’t feel like a building is crushing his diaphragm, and that is always a welcome feeling. When he tries to move, everything aches, but it’s not as overwhelming as it was before.
The lights in his room are bright, almost too bright, and it takes a few blinks for him to be able to process his surroundings. He’s in the medical bay of the tower, he knows that much. And after a moment, he realizes he isn’t alone.
There’s only one chair in the room, and it seems like it has been given to a sleeping Aunt May. Carefully perched on the very foot of his bed was MJ, looking particularly flighty but determined to push through. At the edge of his bed was, of course, Ned.
They were engaged in some kind of debate, likely about some stupid conspiracy theory MJ had thought of recently. Peter smiled, but he didn’t listen in, not yet. Because when he lifted his eyes just a little higher, he saw Tony.
While everyone else had gathered around Peter, Tony was right by the closed door. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his gaze was aimed straight at the ground, his shoulders slumped. He looked torn between whether or not he really wanted to be there, and Peter felt a weight like a rock in his stomach.
The human brain was a powerful thing, really. Of all the near death experiences Peter had, he only remembered bits and pieces in vivid detail, likely a method of self preservation. And also likely why he constantly got himself into near death situations repeatedly.
And while his latest dance with death was still coming back to him, he could remember the last few moments of consciousness pretty well.
Right. Yeah. He had called Tony dad. Twice.
As much as Ned liked to think he could, Peter couldn’t read minds. But it was pretty clear that Tony hadn’t exactly loved that.
And why would he? Peter was just some random super powered kid that he wanted in the Avengers. And sure, they’d had a handful of moments together. A lot of them came when Tony had to whisk in and save Peter from himself, but there were also plenty of genuine, heartfelt conversations and interactions between them, especially lately. Peter had looked up to Tony his whole life, and that only deepened when he had actually met the man and had spent time with him. He always thought they were close.
But there was a difference between someone being his mentor and being his dad.
Tony’s head finally raised, just enough where his eyes rested on Peter. Peter saw the relief go into his expression, the ease and contentment of knowing Peter was okay, that he was awake and breathing and not trapped under a fallen building.
Peter opened his mouth to say something, probably to stupidly blurt out some kind of excuse, an apology. Remember when I called you my dad? Ha. Yeah. Pain and nearly dying really makes you say crazy things! Can we please, please forget about that?
But, Tony wasn’t the only one to notice he had woken up. MJ and Ned snapped their eyes up to him, and in an instant, they were all over him. MJ was wordlessly brushing his matted up curls back from his face, and Ned was prattling on, asking endless amounts of questions that there’s no way Peter could even begin to answer.
“Dude, are you okay? What happened? They said you were like, under a building. What building? How? How are you even alive? Wha-”
“Ned- okay, wait a second-”
Peter held a hand up, opening and closing his mouth as he tried to figure out a polite way to tell his friend to shut up. Even if blurting out an apology to Tony was a bad idea, he still wanted to say something, at least.
But when he finally looked towards the door, Tony was gone.
-
A week and a half later, Peter was discharged and sent back home with an arsenal of bandages and strict instructions from his doctor to take care of himself. Rest, no strenuous activity, blah blah. Peter had hardly listened, letting May handle it, mostly because he was way too forgetful to remember to change his bandages every few hours.
But also, he hadn’t seen Tony since the day he had woken up.
He knew Tony was still around. He’d heard some of his nurses talking about special requests Tony had made for Peter’s care. Every now and then, FRIDAY’s voice came into the room to ask Peter how he was feeling, and he was smart enough to know his answers went right back to Tony.
But the man himself hadn’t come back to Peter’s room.
And Peter felt like a total idiot. He truly could not believe he’d been so stupid to slip up and do something as stupid as call Tony dad. Seriously, what the hell had he been thinking? Sure, he was in pain and not thinking straight, but still.
His relationship with Tony was one of the few good things in his life. He loved getting special invites to parties he had no business going to. He liked the late nights in the lab, eating greasy pizza and watching Tony’s eyebrows draw up in the way they always did when he was amazed by Peter’s ability to work through a complicated equation. And he’d gone and screwed it all up with one word. There was no way Tony didn’t think he was some weirdo by this point.
One night when he had gotten home, May had helped Peter into bed, making sure he was tucked in with a glass of water within reaching distance. Then, she had left the room, leaving Peter to his own thoughts. Peter didn’t sleep much. Sure, being trapped under a building had been scary and all, but that was practically another day at the office for this superhero.
He could deal with that. Really, the list of things Peter could and couldn’t deal with seemed to vary with every passing day, but it was always simpler when Tony was there. Everything was better when he was there.
But now he wasn’t.
Peter couldn’t sleep. Besides him, his alarm clock ticked right on over to ten after midnight. Since he’d gotten hurt, his wide array of medications always had him knocked out by nine on the dot, but today was a different story. Every time he thought back to the hospital, to what he had called Tony, he felt shame rise in his throat like bile.
He tosses his blanket aside before slowly getting up from the bed. He doesn’t really know where he’s going, probably to the bathroom to throw some water over his face. He just knows he can’t stay in this room. He grabs the doorknob before flinging the door open, and he takes a few steps into the hall before he hears a voice. After a moment, he realizes it’s May.
“Yeah- no, no. He’s doing really well. No signs of infection- yes, Tony. He’s sleeping.”
Peter’s breath caught in his throat. Tony? May was on the phone with Tony? But- it was midnight. Sure, Tony could be a bit of an insomniac, but if he wanted to check in about Peter, why wouldn’t he do it during the-
Ah.
Peter could be an idiot sometimes. See the previously mentioned two buildings he had gotten himself trapped under. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew what this was, he knew when he was being avoided.
He knew Tony didn’t want to chance having to talk to Peter.
Peter felt his lips tugging down. Hurt pulled at his chest, so potent he nearly choked on it. Did Tony really hate him that much? Jumping through all these hoops, doing everything in his power to avoid having to interact with Peter?
Was he going to get kicked out of the Avengers? Was Tony ever going to actually talk to him again?
Did Tony hate him? Did Tony always hate him?
That thought hurt him worse than the stab wound did. Worse than the building collapsing on him. The last time he’d felt pain like this, real, raw, unbearable agony, was when Ben had died.
Maybe that was dramatic of him, to compare being ghosted by someone to the same pain as someone dying. But wasn’t it the same thing? Wasn’t it similar, at least? His heart seemed to think so.
May looked up, no doubt listening to some sort of rambling from Tony. Her eyes fell on Peter, and she silently startled, setting her hand on her chest. When she realized it was just her nephew, she smiled at him. “Oh- Tony, actually, Peter is right here-”
Peter’s eyes widened. He started flailing his hands in the air and shaking his head. “No! No! Do. Not!” He mouthed to her. But May kept talking. “I’m sure he’d appreciate talk-” She’s cut off mid sentence, and her smile slowly falls from her face.
Peter could easily tap into his enhanced hearing if he wanted to. But, he has a feeling he really didn’t want to hear Tony’s rejection on the other line.
“-of course. Yeah, it’s late. Okay. I’ll tell him you said h- oh, hello? Tony?” May pulled the phone from her ear, and frowned when she no doubt saw that the line was disconnected. Her brows furrowed together, and she cocked her head. “That was rude.”
If she said anything else, Peter didn’t hear it. He turned to limp his way back to his room, hiding the tears forming in his eyes.