Chapter Text
Peter’s suit was too tight.
He didn’t really know why—the old suit that Mr Stark had designed for him got a little chafing at times, so he’d gone down to the lab at the tower with him and redesigned every function until it was form-fitting but not form-squeezing.
But something tonight, maybe it was the humidity, maybe he’d hit a sudden growth spurt (in the middle of patrol? And wouldn’t the suit adapt to that? It should!), maybe he was just a little tired.
He sighed and eased himself down onto the ledge, pulling off his mask and leaning back, looking up into the star-studded night sky. Sometimes when he did this his head would trick him into thinking he could see a little twinkling, or a star that seemed to be moving, and his heart would begin to race; apparently seeing Mr. Stark practically every other day hadn’t dulled the excitement that the sight of his friend(?) brought him. He could see one of the stars doing it now, though he was sure it was a trick of the light or his exhausted mind fooling him. He’d been inexplicably tired lately. Even with cutting down the length of patrols, forcing himself to go to bed earlier, and pounding two or three cups of coffee every morning, he would feel irrevocably fatigued throughout the day.
A flash of danger. To the left.
He grabbed his mask and slipped it on.
Lowering himself down onto the side of the brick apartment building he’d been resting on, he crawled carefully and methodically to the direction his spidey-sense was pinging him to, eyes wide and alert beneath his comically expressive lenses.
“Spiiiider? Ready to come out and play?”
His lenses closed with a camera shutter sound as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He could easily recognize that voice—Thundra.
Whenever they fought, it was a close battle. Her powers were almost identical to Peter’s, save for his super-sticky wall crawling skills and his intelligence, i.e. his web shooters. She was incredibly strong, durable, and had enough stamina to run a marathon without breaking a sweat.
She was also horrifically evil.
She hated men. Peter could be empathetic to that; men could suck really hard sometimes. He was told. But she came from a timeline that was entirely matriarchal, where men were entirely submitted to women, and had only fled that timeline to fight stronger males in this one since she was bored of the ones in her own. Unfortunately for Peter, he was one of those stronger males.
He was not in the right mood to handle this right now. His suit was too freaking tight.
“Karen?” he whispered. “Could you call, um, could you alert the Avengers that I might need a hand? Send them my location.” He squinted at the woman swinging a mace into a residential brick wall, mortar crumbling as she called out for Spider-Man again. “Tell them where they’re gonna be able to find my dead body in a few seconds,” he sighed, before scuttling closer to Thundra.
He webbed the edge of the building and used his feet to control his descent, blood rushing to his head as he hung upside down. “Hey, Thundra. Thought I’d just drop in.”
Her gaze snapped to him, red hair blowing in a gust of harsh New York wind. “Hello, Spider-Male. Are you ready to be subjugated, neck underneath my foot, before your final moments?”
“I don’t think—” his stomach twisted, like someone had reached through his gut, grabbed his organs, and turned— “sorry, what was I saying?”
Thundra frowned and crossed her arm, inadvertently swinging her mace into a nearby wall. “You were admitting how you—oh, rats.” She turned to pull her mace from the wall, giving Peter the perfect opportunity to shoot her to the wall, cheek pressed against the bricks.
“Sorry to web and run, but I’ve got places to be.” He reached into his back pocket for a piece of stationary and a pen when his stomach convulsed again, making him weak in the knees.
“Karen,” he wheezed out, “status report.”
“Peter,” the system responded kindly, “you appear to be presenting.”
A rock dropped down through Peter’s esophagus until it settled in his stomach acid.
Thundra’s right hand wasn’t properly stuck to the wall. She was slowly craning her wrist to pull web off of her arm, freeing it.
Another cramp shook Peter to his core, causing him to drop to his knees and clutch his midsection.
Thundra tore her arm free. Soon she’d be all the way out, strangling Peter with her boot.
“Peter, the Avengers are en route.”
Peter fell onto his side. “No no no, I don’t want them to see me like this, they can’t see me like this, call them off, call them off Karen—”
Pain gripped his stomach again, harder than it had been any other time. Peter was sure he would’ve passed out before reaching this point in the agony if it weren’t for his stupid enhanced durability and strength. He’d never hated his superpowers more than in this moment.
With a shuck, Thundra’s body was free. Peter could see through his watering eyes that she was furious, beautiful face twisted with rage.
“Spider-Boy, if you believe you can defeat me curling into yourself like a pill bug, then the rest of mankind certainly does not stand a cha—”
Clang.
Thundra shifted to the side a few inches, grunting, as Iron Man reared up another punch. She growled and grabbed his fist, twisting, and Peter looked up through his lashes to see an energy beam explode from Mr. Stark’s chest and slam into Thundra square in the breasts.
“Boob shot,” Mr. Stark chuckled, and Peter could vaguely hear over the ringing in his ears a disapproving cluck from someone outside his peripherals.
“Don’t get distracted, Stark.”
His helmet clicked up. “How’m I distracted when the fight’s o—”
Thundra sweeped his legs and the suit crashed to the ground with a clamorous sound that had Peter’s hands rushing to cover his ears over the suit. Everything felt 20 feet removed while 100 times magnified at the same time, like he was floating away from his body but still feeling every single miniscule sensation. It was an odd and unpleasant feeling.
Black Widow stepped forward (Peter could tell ‘cause of her boots) and crossed her arms.
Thundra stepped on the neck of the Iron Man suit, stepping hard enough to cause the metal to dent. “Get out of here, female; I have no qualms with your kind.”
Natasha cocked her head. “These two males are my wards. If you want them, you’ll have to go through me.”
Thundra pushed Stark into the ground with one swift motion, asphalt cracking as he gasped for air, before she began circling Black Widow. Natasha kept her head high, eyes following the titan as she rotated. Thundra eventually came to a stop before Natasha, locking gazes. Peter thought it looked like a staring contest, which he supposed Black Widow won since Thundra hissed and backed off, running down a nearby alley and disappearing from sight.
Mr. Stark finally found some purchase on the road and pushed himself up, brushing chunks of rock off of the suit and making dissatisfied grunts at the paint scratches before he saw Peter.
“Karen, activate Teething protocol,” he said cooly, mask faced towards Peter’s crumpled form. “Nat, can you..?”
The widow was already kneeling by Peter’s shaking body. “Peter? Peter, what’s wrong?”
His suit had started releasing something. It smelled sweet. It made his eyelids feel heavy. And his thoughts short.
“It’s working, whatever it is,” Natasha said, standing.
“I’m gonna take him back to the tower for now. I don’t remember his address.”
“You should know his address.”
“I know his room number.”
Natasha stared at him.
“Jarvis, I’m gonna need an Iron Spider suit with automatic propulors, please? Or—”
“Yes, sir?” Jarvis prompted.
“Do I still have the cocoon prototype somewhere?”
“Yes, sir. Cocoon V.02 is currently sitting in your lab.”
“Send the cocoon, please.”
A yelp sounded from the alley where Thundra had run off to and Clint dropped down from the neighboring building using a grappling arrow. “You guys couldn’t have gotten her? She was slow.”
“Clint, your arrow didn’t peirce her skin. Also, we were a little distracted.”
Stark crossed his arms and looked at Hawkeye. “Always late to the party.”
Clint frowned and looked at (now) sleeping Spider-Man collapsed on the ground. “What’s going on here?”
“I put him to sleep,” Stark said casually before reaching down and picking him up. Peter wrapped his arms around the Iron Man suit’s neck instinctively, legs curling around its waist.
“Aw, Stark, you look almost motherly,” Natasha said, a condescending side smile peeking out and lighthearted glint in her eye.
“Don’t want the suit that I worked so hard to design to just lay on the floor like an outdated copy of Playboy. I just hadn’t anticipated him attaching.” Stark grabbed the boy under his armpits and held him out, like one might do with a cat, and Peter’s body immediately curled back in to himself. Stark brought the boy back to himself, and he spread out, clinging onto the suit. He did the same thing couple more times, fascinated by how Peter’s body was reacting despite being in deep, chemical induced slumber, when he suddenly got sent forward by a blow to his back. He stuttered forward, grunting, the unexpected momentum causing him to lose grip on the kid.
Clint dove forward and caught Peter before he hit the ground, elbows scraping against the asphalt. “Stark, keep a better hold of your things.”
Stark took Peter back with a huff and threw him over his shoulder, the high-tech baby carrier that had just arrived accepting the boy and supporting his head. A nano-bot Spider-Man mask crawled over his face but didn’t cover any of the rest of his body.
“Why do you have that?” Natasha asked, voice deadpan.
“Because this has been a long time coming and I would rather be prepared for everything than not. It’s logical, Romanoff.” He turned away from the two other Avengers. “Jarvis, status on the spider?”
“He is secure and ready for flight, sir.”
Just to test, Stark jumped a couple of times, making sure the ‘cocoon’ as he called it had grafted itself onto the Iron Man suit successfully. After he deemed it ready, he began hovering.
“Race you to the tower, Romanoff.”
He blasted away with a chuckle immediately.
Natasha dialed a number on her cell while Clint grumbled, “I don’t understand how we get here at the same time yet he gets home so quickly.”
A car pulled up a few moments later. Natasha took the passenger seat while Clint slid into the back. Neither of them buckled their seat belts.
“Uh, where to, miss?” the taxi driver asked, adjusting his rear view mirror as he watched Clint pull an arrow out of a seat cushion.
“The tower,” Natasha responded, keeping her gaze fixed on the road.
The driver gulped. “Alrighty then.”
***
“So, Tony, would you catch us up on the spider?” Clint asked, out of breath. Tony was speedwalking to the living room like his life depended on it. He’d never seen the man so focused.
A mechanical whirring began and Tony’s next step was out of the suit. “Jarvis, turn her around for me, would you?”
The suit closed itself and pivoted so the cocoon and Peter were facing Tony, Natasha, and Clint. His masked head had lolled a bit to the side, and his legs and arms were clenched and drawn in, like he was cold.
“He’s presenting,” Tony murmured. “Karen. Yoo-hoo. Are you online?”
“Yes, sir. All systems active.”
“Great. Uh, do me a favor and run a full-body check on Peter. I want hormone levels, a hormone timeline, and tell me when he wakes up.”
“On it, sir.”
Tony clapped his hands together and smiled with his lips at Clint and Natasha. “Looks like we’re gonna be covering for Spider-Man for the time being.”
Natasha picked up Peter’s face and looked at the lenses for a second before gently setting it back down. “Shouldn’t he be with his family? He needs to be with someone who’ll protect him.”
Tony shifted a little uncomfortably as Nat’s normally calm scent flared. His omega rushed to release something gentler but he knew that once something got Nat going, she wouldn’t stop until there was a solution.
“His aunt is out of town for a couple of months. He’s been staying here at the tower, remember?”
A muscle in her jaw feathered. “I know that. I just—. It can be difficult, to present with no one around. That cares for you.”
Clint grabbed Nat’s hand. “We can watch him. We’ve already been doing that, right?”
“All done, sir,” Karen’s voice cut through brightly. All the heavy scents in the room coming off of Tony and Nat (Clint was a beta) faded to a sense of interest rather than worry.
“All right, give it to me straight,” Tony said, arms crossing.
“Hormone levels are high. The increased levels began eight days ago. He’s presenting unnaturally late for his age, sir.”
Nat’s eyes flicked to Tony’s, who responded by reaching forward and rubbing his wrist on one of Nat’s. “I’ve looked into this already. It’s probably got to do with that nasty little spider bite, though I could be wrong. Not that I ever have been. When’s the sedative gonna wear off? I don’t remember how strong I made it.”
Peter’s head shifted.
“Now, sir.”