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Peter stayed in the med bay for a day. Dr. Cho wanted him to stay longer considering how many toxins were in his system, but Peter already felt overwhelmed with embarrassment that he’d stayed that long.
His kidnapping was short. Three days. 72 hours. That’s it, and in that time Peter had already doubted Tony was coming, thought he would die, and broken his own arm for his kidnappers. Mr. Stark told him it didn’t matter, tried to convince him that the amount of physical strain on his body paired with his metabolism working against him thanks to the lack of food was enough to make anyone react that way. But Peter knew deep down it was because he was- because he is - weak. The average person can live nearly a month, possibly even a few, without food. Sure, Peter used a lot more calories than the average person, and he didn’t feel like he was starving to death at any point, but he did accept the stupid soup eagerly. A day without food and Peter acted like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
So yeah- he’s not sitting in the med bay any longer. He’s Spider-Man. He has to show everyone that he will always get back up as quickly as possible.
Luckily, there are only a few avengers in the tower still. Wanda and Vision both left once he was stable and awake to work on some mission with Steve and Bucky. Thor is off-world doing really awesome Asgardian stuff- at least Peter assumes he is. Clint is back home with his family, but promised to come back soon. The others are scattered around, living life, leaving Natasha and Rhodey in the tower currently.
“Good morning, FRIDAY. Where is everyone?” He asks as he heads to his room to shower and change. Tony insisted on him and May staying here until he gets a clean bill of health from Dr. Cho.
“Good morning, Peter. Colonel Rhodes is in the kitchen making lunch, Natasha Romanov is in the common area knitting what appears to be a scarf, and Boss is in the lab, but should be joining the others for lunch soon. Would you like me to tell them you are coming as well?”
He honestly just wants to go down to the lab and lose himself in science, but he should eat first.
“Yeah, you can tell them I’m joining… Tell them I’m gonna shower first, please.”
Once he’s clean and wrapped in his softest sweater, he heads down to the common room. Peter barely registers that everyone is sitting on the couches with bowls before his mind freezes, his spidey sense vacillating between danger, warning, and silence. Something is wrong, but he can’t tell where the danger is.
That is until he’s able to calm himself enough to actually categorize his senses again. The tower is relatively soundproof, so luckily he mainly just hears a few employees talking a few floors down about if Jeremy cheated on Bethany- huh, he’ll have to check on Bethany later. The lights aren’t too bright, and by now he’s used to tuning out the small fibers floating in the air. His clothes are soft against his skin. There are a lot of smells- Tony’s cologne, Pepper’s shampoo, some new dish soap, and… chicken noodle soup.
It’s just chicken noodle soup. It’s fine. Rhodey made it, and he’s a great cook. Honestly, Peter loves his soups. They’re always the right balance of salty and savory and layered. But the smell of it makes him think he also smells concrete and blood and bergamot even though none of those scents are here.
He forces himself to sit down and smile as Rhodey passes him a bowl. He’s fine . He’s with friends and he’s safe. He even has a spoon. See? So different from the other soup. No drugs or cameras or broken bones here.
He waits for it to cool enough to eat, repeating his internal reassurances. He laughs. He jokes. He takes a bite.
And promptly sprints to the bathroom to throw up, heaving long past when his stomach is empty. He can’t keep anything down the rest of the day.
He’s finally in the lab again, back in his happy place. He and Mr. Stark are working on the propulsion system he started before the whole kidnapping incident. As much as he whined about Mr. Stark working without him, the new energy source is objectively awesome. They fall into an easy rhythm, working around each other’s hands in the mechanism, passing each other tools without even needing to be asked.
Peter heads over to the schematics to double-check the layout of a connection he can’t quite see inside the casing. A note to paint the system later catches his eye and he groans.
“Mr. Stark, no. Just— no. You can’t just paint everything hot rod red.”
“Actually, I can, kid. I could make the White House red with a snap of my fingers if I wanted.”
Peter stares at him blankly. “You do realize that sounds like a threat, right?”
Tony splutters. “Wha- hey- you know what I meant! Don’t mince my words!” He shakes his head and grumbles. “This is why I throw out the cards and just come out and say it…”
“This is a perfect example of why you need the cards, Mr. Stark. It’s a wonder people think you’re a genius- how’d you fool them?” He hides his grin by ducking down to inspect a pair of wires closer.
“Oh, you little— hey Fri? Work up a new Spider suit. Hot rod red. No blue. Throw some gold in so everyone knows I’m really his favorite.”
Peter laughs. “Hey! No fair. My suits, my intellectual property. You can’t make a spider suit that doesn’t look like a spider suit without getting into legal trouble, right Friday?”
“That is correct, Peter.”
Peter throws a smug smirk at Tony, who throws his hands up in surrender. “I never should have let you go to those conferences with Pepper. Whatever.” He shakes his head, though he can’t keep the fondness from his eyes. “Why don’t you get back to science and away from law? We need some more test coolant. I don’t know if this one is just weak or if the mechanism puts out too much heat.” He moves a few wires aside. “If we keep having to mix more, this thing will waste more resources than it’s saving.”
“We could try adding more fluorinert instead of graphene oxide. The graphene oxide might be interacting with the ethylene glycol and reducing the effectiveness.” He thinks aloud as he walks over to the fume hood to mix up the coolant. The old flask is still half full, but the more he thinks about it, the more fluorinert seems like the right call. He flicks the switch next to the hood to protect them both. “What do you-“
Click. Hiss.
No no no no please no. All of his muscles lock up in anticipation, jaw clenched so tightly his teeth creak. He whimpers softly, preparing to enter the nightmare again.
The air kicks on in the hood. He’s not tied to a table. He’s not weakening with every dose. Maybe Tony didn’t notice?
He’s staring right at Peter.
Peter forces his shoulders to drop and chews on his lip. He averts his eyes from Tony’s and coughs, as if that will explain his panic. “Sorry about that… uh— what do you think about doubling the concentration of fluorinert?”
Mr. Stark stands and wipes the grease from his hands as he comes over. He just looks so.. Worried. And of course Peter is touched that he cares. Of course it feels good to see his doubts weren’t true. Mr. Stark cares. But if Peter can’t figure out how to fix himself, he’s going to stop caring. Mr. Stark isn’t going to wait around on him and his freak outs forever. If he can’t fix this, all of his doubts are going to become reality.
Before Tony can say anything, Peter takes a step back. “I’m fine , Mr. Stark. I swear. The noise… It was just a little loud, that’s all.”
Tony raises an eyebrow, but he’s never been the best at feelings and heart to hearts. “Kid, you don’t have to be-”
“I am, though. Can we please just get back to science?” He never interrupts Mr. Stark like that, but if the man keeps talking to him with that careful, gentle tone, Peter is going to explode. Tony must be able to see that Peter really does just want to move on, because he nods and looks into the hood.
“Why don’t we try tripling it and half the graphene. Maybe that’ll give us the intensity we need without taking up more volume.” Peter thinks that’s it, but a few minutes later, Tony interrupts the quiet of their work. “Pete, if you ever aren’t fine, just promise you’ll tell me so I can help?”
“Yeah, of course.” He means it, but deep down he knows it’ll take a lot for him to get to that point.
Despite Mr. Stark’s arguments against it, Peter decided to go back to school. He was already over a week behind after staying hidden away in the tower, and he didn’t really want to let the pile of homework keep growing. Luckily, his absences were excused so he was actually allowed to make up the work instead of taking zeros.
A few administrative people knew he’d been kidnapped, mainly because Tony was livid that the school security was lax enough to allow a student to be taken mid-day. They obviously didn’t know the details, just that Peter was taken in connection to Tony Stark. A note appeared next to his name stating that if he got overwhelmed at any point, he could go to the nurse’s office or to the school psychologist. As much as Peter appreciated that it was done in an attempt to care for him, he was humiliated. He didn’t need to run away from calculus just because he had been tied up. And electrocuted. And beaten. And tortured.
The point still stands. He is fine. People just don’t seem to believe him when he says it.
He’s texting MJ and Ned to see where they’re hanging out until first period, hugging the wall as he makes his way through the halls. They were the only two that knew what happened, even if he had given them a heavily edited version of events to keep them from worrying as much as the adults in his life had been. A few people whisper that he was out because he got mono? Well, there are worse rumors they could have gone to. MJ replies that they’re in the art room and he quickly heads there.
The teacher glances up from her computer when Peter walks in, but she immediately returns to her work. Peter smiles at his friends; MJ is sketching while Ned rambles on about a new fan theory he saw online. It’s so perfectly normal. This is what he needed.
Then he inhales to say hi. Paint, obviously, probably oil paint based on the canvases around the room. Chalk. Graphite. Wood. MJ’s shampoo. Ned’s laundry detergent. Paint thinner.
The moment he smells it, it’s all he can focus on. He vaguely registers that MJ is standing up, but then the air conditioning kicks on and he flinches so hard his neck hurts. He can’t breathe in here. He’s trapped. He’ll never get out. He’s going to die-
Peter turns and sprints out of the room, fighting back tears. He can still smell it, the scent lingering in his nose and in his throat and in his veins . Somehow, he ends up in the empty film studio room. It’s carpeted, and the foam on the walls helps muffle the sounds outside. Peter curls into a ball in the corner and forces himself to try to breathe. He tries to focus on the new smells. Dust. Foam. Paint thinner. Chinese leftovers. Paint thinner. Dirt. Febreze. Books. Paint thinner. MJ’s shampoo. Ned’s detergent. Graphite.
There are hands on his own now, and hands on his shoulders. Through the blur of tears, he manages to look up and see MJ and Ned crouching in front of him. They don’t ask what happened, they don’t push him to answer. They just stay with him and wait while he breathes and grounds himself again.
He’s on the couch between Natasha and Clint, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Just a few more curves and he’ll be the Mario Kart champion of the night. Natasha is quiet, focusing on her character’s race, while Peter and Clint throw insults and jabs back and forth. Clint jams his elbow into Peter’s side, but he doesn’t even flinch. Nuh uh. Not when he’s this close. His spidey sense tingles right before Clint’s finger twitches and the sound of a blue shell exits the speakers.
“Take that, bug boy!”
“I know where you sleep, bird brain.” The threat is half hearted, distracted. Because Peter has only one hope of holding onto his victory. He saw on reddit once that you can use a mushroom to avoid a blue shell, and luckily Peter has one in his item slot. He just has to get the timing right.
The shell circles over him once, Clint already cheering in victory. Twice. It starts to tip up and this is when he needs to boost-
The screen goes white and the music cuts off. Peter’s remote is dead.
He falls back dramatically, groaning. There’s no way the game will register his mushroom as the right timing now.
Beside him, Clint cackles. “Gonna admit defeat? I’ll be nice and only rub it in for a few days.”
Peter considers it for all of a millisecond before shaking his head. He still has one turn left. If he’s smart- which he is- and lucky- which he is not- he might just be able to pull ahead of Clint with the acceleration he’d get by staying behind him. Worth a shot.
“You wish. Prepare to be slaughtered, old man.” He jumps up to hunt down spare batteries. There should be some in the kitchen junk drawer.
“Nat, did you hear him?! Aren’t you going to defend my honor?”
“You are going a little grey, Clint.”
“You take that back!”
Peter chuckles to himself at Clint’s indignant squawks. The man is dangerous, sure, but he’s a dork.
He reaches for the drawer to get the batteries and a sharp shock zips up his fingers to his arm.
The air isn’t working. He’s pulling it in but his lungs won’t stop burning. It’s too sharp, too shallow to provide relief. He can’t hear anything except a loud whooshing noise. The world is gone, buried beneath the panic and the danger signals and the terror running through him. Why can’t he breathe? The walls don’t look right. They’re getting closer, falling on top of him and he’s somehow on the floor now. Someone is shouting but he can’t hear them. His body is buzzing and trembling and filled with static.
And then Tony is there and is pulling Peter’s hand to his chest, saying something. Tony is here. He’s here. Everything is okay. He’s able to work out that Tony is telling him to breathe with him, so he tries. He follows the slow inhale of the older man, forces out the exhale. The walls settle into place. The sound filters back in. His lungs open. His mind clears.
“There you go, bambino. Good job. You’re doing great. You’re here with me, Nat, and Clint. We’re in the tower. It’s Wednesday, it’s nearly six in the evening. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
Peter slowly calms. Once he feels in control of himself again, he tugs gently on his hand and Tony lets go.
“Sorry… got a shock when I touched the handle…” He laughs weakly, like it makes sense to break down over static. He hates the mix of pity, understanding, and guilt in Tony’s eyes. Mr. Stark doesn’t freak out when it rains and he gets wet, even after being water boarded and tortured for months, yet here Peter is panicking because of a stupid little static shock. It’s just electrons jumping to balance the charge! It’s not a big deal, and he is fine. So so fine.
Peter stands back up and forces a grin. “Getting shocked Hertz. Get it? Hertz? Like the physicist?” They’re all still staring and he needs them to stop. Clint looks to Natasha for guidance on what to do. She opens her mouth to say something, but Peter cuts her off. “Hey, Mr. Stark- I was thinking- you know that kid’s experiment where you bend water with electricity? What if we combined that with the taser webs and- here let me show you! Oh, you win, Clint!”
He rushes down to the lab before anyone can question him. Once the elevator doors close, he slides to the ground and hangs his head between his knees, ignoring the sting of tears in his eyes.
It’s not the first time he’s been back out as Spider-Man since the kidnapping, not even close. He’s had wonderful patrols, mainly stopping purse snatchers and finding lost dogs. He even managed to catch a painter right before the man could hit the ground when his rigging failed. The man was extremely grateful and kind, but Peter couldn’t really focus on his words once he smelled the paint. It must have been an older can, because paint thinner was mixed in, the scent lingering underneath the chalkiness of the paint itself. He excused himself as quickly as he could and spent the next hour throwing up in a nearby alleyway.
Now, he’s actually fighting a big bad with the avengers. He managed to get most of the civilians to safety and is swinging around looking for any stragglers. There’s a man trying to take a video of the fight instead of running away and Peter rolls his eyes as he approaches the man. Honestly, he gets the morbid fascination, but really? Surely the average New Yorker has a little more self preservation than this. Although maybe that’s hypocritical of him to think.
“Spidey, heads up. The robot is heading your way,” Captain America’s voice says through the comms. Peter is fighting with Captain America. So. Cool.
Coolness aside, he needs to get this guy out of here before he gets hurt. Peter lands and opens his mouth to speak when his spidey sense screams and he acts without thinking, shooting a web out to drag the man forward by the chest. A chunk of concrete twice his size lands in the spot he was standing a moment later. Rather than, oh I don’t know, running and screaming, the man whoops in celebration and keeps filming. Peter actually facepalms at that, which means he doesn’t see the smaller chunk of concrete flying towards them. He doesn’t see the man raise his arms up in celebration, doesn’t have time to react to another spike of danger .
But he does hear it. He hears the concrete hit the man’s arm, and he hears the bones snap, and then he isn’t standing on the street anymore. He’s crouching in front of a chair, staring at his own arm and contemplating whether he should break it again. He’s dizzy and he’s tired and he just wants someone to help him. He’s strapped down to a chair he can’t break out of. He’s feeling the air rush around him as a hammer swings down and breaks his arm and then he’s doing it again himself and that voice is taunting him and revealing that he was never the one in control. He’s sitting on the ground now, hugging his knees close. The world flickers back in for a moment, long enough for him to see the man cradling his broken arm and gasping in pain as the avengers come running. Peter is useless. He’s nothing. He’s back in that chair and swimming in pain, and maybe a part of him feels he deserves this, because what kind of hero breaks this easily? The world doesn’t need boys who flinch and tear up every time the air conditioner kicks on. The world doesn’t need a boy who can’t even walk into a bistro anymore because the smell of soup is overwhelming and has spread from chicken noodle to every soup flavor sending him running to the bathroom. It doesn’t need boys that have to leave every door open on dry days to avoid a shock from touching the door handle.
He comes back to reality again, still trembling, to see the street is a wreck. There’s a giant robot- cool - laying on the ground. Wanda, Steve, and Bucky are talking quietly in front of it, but Peter doesn’t bother paying enough attention to actually tell what they’re saying. He’s not where he was standing before, so someone must have moved him over to the sidewalk during the fight. The man is gone as well. Hopefully one of the Avengers was able to help him. Shame floods through Peter, sharp and hot. His job was to keep civilians safe, and he couldn’t do that. Even worse, he was an active hindrance in the fight since someone had to take the time to get him out of the way.
He’s supposed to be fine. He’s supposed to be the amazing Spider-Man. Right now… he isn’t. He looks over to find Tony sitting close to him, a suit standing protectively beside the pair. He doesn’t say anything when he makes eye contact with Peter, just opens his arms slightly in offer. Peter falls into them, sinking into the hug for a moment.
“I think I might need help, Mr. Stark…”
It’s shameful that he does, but Tony doesn’t say that. He doesn’t laugh at how weak Peter is, or point out that he went through so much worse. He just squeezes Peter tighter.