Chapter Text
“Your blood pressure is dropping. I suggest alerting MJ. Would you like me to initiate the call?”
Peter grunted in pain as he fired another web, pain seeming to pool in his bed leg as he swung from one lamp post to another and finally to his building. “Ugh, no she’s at that ‘meeting for conspiring minds’ conspiracy theory group thing. I’m not ruining that for her, she’s been talking about it for weeks.”
He clung to the side of his building and opened his window, bloody, red handprints smearing across the glass before he could get a grip on it. Shit he was dizzy. When it finally opened he shoved his head and chest through and let himself fall inside, knowing his legs wouldn't be able to hold him up.
He hit the ground with a thump and jarred his leg, snapping his eyes shut against the pain just as E.V turned the lights on. “Shit! Fuck, that hurts!”
“Perhaps Ned should be called?”
Peter laid there for a second, jaw clenched and fists pressed against his eyelids until he saw stars. “Hnng, no. The last time Ned saw this much blood he threw up and then passed out into it. We aren’t calling anyone. I can deal with it. I’ve done it before.”
He lowered his hands and blinked up at the ceiling until the stars and black spots disappeared and then pressed his hands to the floor instead.
“You promised MJ that you would ask for help when you needed it and your vitals are already at dangerously low levels. I do not advise you to undertake this task alone. Your chances of success are less than-”
Peter cut E.V off with a grunt as he forced himself up to sitting with shaking arms. “E.V track my vitals, keep me awake and that's all unless I ask for something!” He didn’t like talking to her like that. He knew she was a computer system, he’d built and programmed her but still.
She went silent and he wanted to apologize but sitting there looking down at his leg he had to concentrate on not throwing up.
That stupid bad guy of the week had been running around with a boomerang. I mean, really? And yeah, Peter had webbed him up within 20 minutes but not before he’d cut his web mid swing and sent him hurling into some broken and VERY sharp rebar. That had hurt like a mother and left a deep five inch gash on the side of his upper left thigh.
Boomerang guy had kept coming at him so quick he hadn’t had a chance to put a compression web on it for a good while and now as he looked down at it he knew he made the right call leaving Ned out of it. His entire left leg was soaked with blood, he could even feel it oozed in between his toes in his suit and he let out a queasy groan at the warm squish of it.
“Peter?”
He pulled his mask off before he could throw up with it on and started yanking his suit off. “E.V, start the ‘Stay awake’ protocol.”
Peter started dragging himself across the floor to the bathroom as E.V started playing a playlist Peter had labelled ‘Tony’s workshop’ at max volume.
War Pigs was blaring as he made it to his shower and he pulled his first aid kit out from under the sink as he crawled in. He leaned back against the shower wall and closed his eyes for a second, panting from his trek but he must have had them closed a little too long because E.V flashed the lights to a blaring white and he jolted awake, pain lancing his eyes and his leg simultaneously.
“Ah, fuck. Sorry, sorry. I’m here. I’m awake.” He lifted a hand to rub his eyes but saw it was covered in blood and shook his head instead. “Right, right. Where’s the web dissolver?”
“Inside, front pocket.”
Peter looked down and saw the first aid kit in his lap and opened it, finding the bottle where E.V had indicated. His slick hand trembled when he pulled the bottle out but he managed to dissolve the web with minor stinging and spills.
Throwing the bottle to the side he was finally able to pull his suit off all the way but with it came a fresh wave of blood. Every movement of his leg pulled the wound open and Peter was getting dizzy enough that he needed to lean on the wall behind him or he would fall.
“Peter, your blood pressure-”
“I know. Order my usual electrolytes and take-out to be delivered tomorrow. UHGGFFUCK!” He grabbed a compress from the kit and slapped it to the wound, pressing down as hard as he could with one hand despite the blinding pain it caused while the other went for the needles.
Thank fuck he had done this enough to know to thread them ahead of time because his hands were shaking so badly now it was a battle just to pick the thin little thing up.
His vision was doubling and blurring now and he blinked hard to try and clear it as he grabbed the needle. This wasn’t going to be fun but as soon as it was done he could sleep and man he was tired.
“Come on, Peter. You can do it. Come on, Spider-Man.” Black spots appeared and disappeared between blinks and he swayed against the wall as he pulled back the already soaked compress.
More blood ran down his thigh and dripped into the alarmingly big puddle he was sitting in, and he used his forearm to try and wipe away what he could to clear the cut so he could see what he was working with.
“Peter, you need to move faster if you will not allow me to call for help. Your blood pressure and heart rate indicates that you may lose consciousness very soon.”
He could feel it too, his heart fluttering in his chest as it tried to keep pumping and he blinked hard and got started, jamming the curved needle into the top of the gash. A stab of pain lanced through him as he shoved it in one side and forced it through to the other, the flash of agony helping to focus his sight for a second before slamming him with exhaustion once it sunk away. He grit his teeth and pulled the pieces of his skin gently together, trying not to gag at the blood that gushed out from the pressure, and tied the knot.
It was a painfully slow process with one hand as he had to keep the other one on the wound to keep the pressure on but finally after a minute or so he had it done. The first stitch. Christ.
He felt his heart jolt in his chest and shivered as he sagged against the wall, trying to breathe through the pain throbbing in his leg. He felt wrung out from just that one stitch and now he was going to have to do it all again.
He swapped his hand holding the compress for an elbow instead so he could snip the thread and string the next suture. The anticipation was the worst part so Peter didn’t waste any time and pushed through two more stitches while the music blared on and E.V gave occasional encouragement.
Half way through the third however his hands were just shaking too badly to line the needle up to the cut and he had to take a break. Peter went to lean back against the wall but couldn’t hold himself up enough for any grace or control and simply slammed against it, breaths coming in fast, shallow pants as his teeth chattered uncontrollably.
“Fuck, E.V how many more stitches does this need?”
E.V lowered the blaring Aerosmith long enough to reply. “A wound of that size in that area would ideally need about 15 stitches to close and heal properly.”
Peter closed his eyes and dropped his head to his chest with an exhausted half sob. Maybe he should just do what Frank sometimes did and use staples. He’d have to ask E.V to order some. He’d never gotten any before because although he didn’t like to think he was all that vain, he’d seen the scars from Frank's self stapled hack jobs and they healed really ugly.
Shit he was tired. He needed a break. Just a small one. He was so tired. Tired from the fight, tired from the pain, tired from breathing. It was all so hard. He needed a rest. Just for a minute. He felt his hand fall from his lap and land with a small splash in the puddle below him.
“Peter, you can’t fall asleep!”
There was a bright flash of light and the music blared louder but Peter was just so tired. He groaned and screwed his eyes shut, turning away from the light. “E.V, stop.”
“PETER, WAKE UP!”
It was just a quick nap and then he would keep going. He’d get up soon.
“PETER, WAKE UP!”
Something bright flashed behind Peter's eyelids again but the blackness was so deep he didn’t even flinch. He tried to speak but it only came as a whisper. “E.V, snooze my alarms. I’m too tired.”
“PETER, YOU CANNOT FALL ASLEEP!”
But Peter had already sunk down into the black.
………….
“Jerry’s a drunk. I don’t think we should be trusting the stories we hear from someone who’s drunk 24/7.”
MJ raised a hand to direct all eyes to her and countered, gesturing to the older gentleman in question. “Wouldn’t you be inclined to drink all the time if your wife was a lizard person? I think it’s more of a chicken versus egg situation. Does Jerry think his wife is a lizard person because he drinks or does he drink because his wife IS a lizard person?”
Discussions broke out across the room but MJ felt a buzz in her pocket and pulled out her phone, the screen lit up with a message. E.V had sent her an alert. It was just two lines of text and an image.
‘Stay awake protocol failed. Peter requires immediate assistance.’
The room around her was still loud with discussions but MJ’s world was silent except for the pounding of her own racing heart. A conversation she’d had with Peter months ago playing in her head.
“You can’t do this spider thing all by yourself anymore you know.”
Peter had looked up from the chinese takeout she’d brought him, still in Frank's sweats from his hospital breakout, bruises and cuts still fresh on his face. “The spider thing?”
MJ was sitting at his computer, looking through E.V’s system. It was an incredible system he had designed but there was one major flaw.
“Peter, you have E.V tracking your vitals and initiating protocols in case of emergencies but none of them involve asking for back up.”
Peter gestured with a chopstick, trying to blow off her concern. “I ask De Wolf for back up all the time.”
MJ gave him a flat glare. “You know what I’m talking about. These directives here say that if you’re hurt E.V-”
Peter hadn’t been able to look at her, apparently too occupied with his chow mein. “Is more than enough help and has worked perfectly fine-”
MJ cut him off that time, voice raised in disbelief. “Perfectly fine? You have her programmed to wipe any trace of you from every known database if you die! Not to call for help! To erase you! I know you thought you had to do this alone to protect Ned and I but you have to know that this is going too far. And we know about you now anyway so, you need to change it. Cause, it’s psychotic.”
She hadn’t realised she’d stood up to shout her little speech at him until she had to sit back down, panting, and turned back to his computer. She’d felt him staring at her as she angrily brushed her ears away but she just ignored him until he finally said, in a small, surprised voice. “Okay.”
MJ stood in the cold meeting hall and stared at her phone, reading those two lines over and over, begging her brain to have misunderstood them.
‘Stay awake protocol failed. Peter requires immediate assistance.’
She stood from her seat and opened the image, shaking hand reaching for her mouth at what she saw.
It was Peter's bathroom, a trail of blood leading to the shower where Peter sat, and MJ felt her stomach drop down to her feet and hold back a gag. He looked dead. Oh god, he was limp, sagged against the wall, head dropped to his chest and sitting in a pool of blood.
Someone might have asked if MJ was alright. She didn’t know and she didn’t care, she grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and ran, already calling E.V before she made it out the door.
“Hello, MJ”
“Is he alive?” She ran across the street where thankfully a taxi had just let someone out, and leapt in the back seat, spitting out the address as quick as she could before E.V could answer.
“Peter is alive but his vitals are at dangerously low levels. He has lost 45% of his total blood volume and he is no longer responding to any form of stimuli. He will not last much longer in his current state.”
The taxi was moving now but MJ thumped her foot against the floor in an anxious beat as she thought of the way Peter had looked. “Can you tell him I’ll be there soon? That I’m coming?” She turned to the taxi driver. “Go faster, please!”
E.V’s voice was level as always. “He is not responding to any form of-”
MJ bit down a sob and covered her eyes with one hand. “I know. Just- tell him. Please.”
MJ hung up and wiped her eyes, immediately going through her other contacts and selecting another.
“Frank, you know a guy at the blood bank right?”
…….
The taxi driver had not appreciated MJ’s half screamed orders to just fuck the law and drive faster but he had done as she’d said and got her there as fast as he could. She was out the door before he had even stopped, money thrown on the seat as she bolted for the stairs.
MJ had never made it up so many stairs so fast in her life and when she got to the top she saw that Frank had arrived just moments before she did.
“I’m coming, kid!” Frank took a step back and raised his foot, kicking the door in with a bang and within seconds the two of them were inside.
“Peter!” MJ felt as if her heart was in her throat, she could barely breathe past it and as they ran in, rock music blaring and lights flashing they both only had to follow the trail of blood to find who they were looking for.
“E.V stand by!” The lights went back to normal and the music stopped and the apartment felt suddenly so cold as they raced to the bathroom.
They both paused in the doorway when they found him but while Frank surged ahead MJ had to grip the doorway to keep from falling to her knees. There was just so much blood.
“Shit. Peter?” Frank ran in and dropped a case to the floor before leaning into the shower, pressing two fingers to the kids neck and paused for a few seconds. He was frowning and MJ started sinking to the floor. He couldn’t be.They hadn’t taken that long. Frank shook his head, looking unhappy and held his hand in front of Peter's mouth and nose.
“Fuck.” Frank grabbed Peter under the arms and started lifting, nodding to his feet. “Get his legs, we need to lay him on the ground.”
MJ sucked in a breath and shook her head. “Is he-?”
Frank was already pulling a limp Peter half way out of the shower and he kicked his case out of the way as he raised his voice to snap her out of her shock. “He’s alive but he’s not breathing so grab his legs so we can lay him down!”
It was like a switch had been flipped and her body was hers to control again and she leapt forward and clutched Peter's soaking knees and hauled them up. He looked like a rag doll, head flopped back and arms limp and dangling as they laid him on the bathroom floor, needle and thread still hanging from the partially stitched gash on his leg.
Frank was reaching for his case the second he let go of Peter, opening it and pulling out supplies. He pulled an ambu bag out and reached across Peter's limp body to grab her hand and pull her to her knees. She winced as her knees slammed to the floor but Frank was already wrapping her hands around the ambu bag and guiding it to Peter's face.
“You need to breathe for him while I get the bleeding stopped. Put your fingers under his chin, tilt his head back and open his airway. Just keep squeezing the bag.”
His hands left hers and he pulled towels from the shelf behind him and put them on top of the sopping wet, red lump of rag that lay across Peter's thigh and used a bandage roll from his case to hastily tie it and cinch it tight, muttering to himself the whole time. “Aw, you stupid fucking kid. What did you do, huh?”
MJ squeezed her hands in slow rhythmic pumps, trembling fingers hooked under Peter's jaw to hold it forward and keep his airway open as she forced air into his lungs. She could see his chest moving obediently up and down but his eyelids were shut, his skin was cold and pale and she could feel his pulse fluttering against her fingers and it was terrifyingly fast and faint.
Frank was moving again, done with the bandage and pulling out a thin cooler instead. He popped the top and pulled out a bag of blood and another of clear fluid, tubes and a needle came next which he placed and taped in Peter's arm too efficiently to bear thinking about. He moved from one task to the next with not a single pause or misstep between and as soon as the line was taped he grabbed both bags and slapped them on the top of the counter to drain down into Peter's arm.
He stood and turned to go, looking at her over his shoulder. “I’ll be a second, keep squeezing.”
MJ was about to ask him not to leave but he was gone too quick and she looked back down into Peter's limp, pale face, trying to blink the tears away. He was too still, too empty, it was too much like at the hospital when Jean had been breathing for him and he had been…somewhere else. Except now there was no Jean, it was just her breathing for Peter and he was still gone. MJ shook the thought from her head and looked up to see Frank was back, arms full.
He dropped pillows on the floor and laid a blanket over Peter before carefully placing some of the pillows under his feet to raise his legs.
He gathered the last of the pillows and came up near MJ. “You’re gonna keep squeezing, I’m gonna put some of these under him and get him in a better position, okay?”
They met eyes and MJ nodded, seeing a patience and kindness in Frank she’d never seen before. He knew what he was doing and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how. She kept squeezing, kept pushing air into Peter's tired chest and Frank slid his hands under his back, lifting him to stack the pillows under his shoulders and neck until his head was tipped back and supported so that MJ could feel the air flow easier into him.
“There, that should be better. I’m gonna clean that cut and stitch it up. You just let me know if you need a break and tag me in, okay? How’s his pulse?”
He was already moving on to his next task, flipping the blanket up and grabbing a bottle of disinfectant before reaching for the towels tied onto Peter's leg.
“A little more regular but it’s still weak.” She squeezed and let go, over and over, refusing to acknowledge the strain in her knuckles as she kept her eyes on Peter's rising and falling chest.
Frank pulled back the compresses and poured disinfectant over the wound, not looking up as he spoke. “Okay, stop the breaths for a second and see if he starts on his own. Keep tracking his pulse, though.”
MJ watched him pick up the needle from where it dangled, still attached to Peter's leg, but she looked away before she could see him start to sew and she looked instead at those brown lashes on Peter's pale cheeks.
She kept one hand on his jaw, fingers curled under his chin to press to his weakly thrumming pulse. “Come on, Peter. You can do this.” She lifted the mask from his mouth, and whispered over him, thumb brushing gentle arcs across his cold cheekbone. “Breathe for me, please.”
She waited a second, watching his chest for that smooth rise and fall…But there was nothing but the weak and suddenly fluttery pulse under her fingertips.
“Dammit, Peter! Why do you always have to do things the hard way!” MJ pressed the mask back over his mouth but she was hyperventilating now, sobs squeezing her throat so tight that her hands shook as she squeezed the stupid bag.
Frank looked up from his work, pulling the thread and whipping it back in without a pause even as he frowned at MJ. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. We’re fine, just keep goin.”
MJ kept the breaths going but took her hand away from Peter's jaw to push her hair back, sinking back onto her heels as she let her body shake with the sobs that wouldn’t stop.
“No, it’s not okay! Why does he do this? Why didn’t he just tell someone he was hurt? Why didn’t he call? Why is he so determined to do this shit alone even if it kills him? I can’t-”
MJ let it out, the pent up fear, the frustration, the overwhelming feeling of loss for a person she felt like she should know but didn’t. When Peter first told her they’d known each other it had felt like a strange prank, she hadn’t known him at all. But after her encounter with Jean it was like all her feelings came back but she didn’t have the memories to back them up.
Suddenly she felt like she was missing a vital piece of her, a best friend, a partner in crime, and it was like every time she turned around she expected to find someone that wasn’t there. She missed Peter.
After the whole ordeal with Jean, Peter and MJ had been spending time together, trying to recover some of her lost memories and create new ones. And most importantly, Peter had agreed, he had promised, that he wouldn't be doing his superhero-ing alone any more.
He knew how she felt about his decision to take her memories of him and keep her out of his life. How could he choose to sit here alone and sew himself up without help? How could he do this to himself again?
MJ felt Frank take the ambu bag from her hand and she sat up from where she’d had her forehead pressed to Peter's shoulder. “He didn’t take a breath. I have to keep going.”
Frank pulled her hands away and replaced them with his own, keeping the rhythm going one handed as he used the other to wrap MJ in a tight hug. “I got it for a while. Come here.”
MJ gripped him back and took some shaky breaths against his shoulder as his low voice rumbled in her ear. “He’s gonna be okay. You hearing me? We got him in time.”
MJ pressed her cheek against his shirt. “But he’s so cold.”
“I know, it’s the blood loss. But you’re gonna turn all the heaters all the way up. You're gonna cover him in every blanket he’s got and once we fill him back up with blood again he’ll be back to his old spidey self. I don’t wanna move him until he’s a bit more stable, so we’ll just camp out here for now but he’s gonna be alright. Okay?”
It was funny since Frank was who he was but MJ felt a lot better with him there. But I guess that's what reassured her. Frank didn’t give out fake platitudes and false hopes, if he thought Peter was nothing more than a slowly cooling corpse he would have just said so. They were alike in that way.
Her whole body relaxed and she let out a shuddering breath like the one you let out after a big cry. “Okay. Thanks, Frank.”
He nodded against her and gave her one last squeeze before letting her go and turning his attention back to his patient.
MJ wiped at her eyes with her sleeves and headed out of the bathroom to Peters desk of computers to snag a pencil to pin her hair up with. “Hey E.V, can you turn the heat up please? And order two coffees and something from that Turkish place around the corner.”
“Sure, MJ.”
She twisted her hair up and pinned it, about to find those blankets when she heard Franks voice.
“You are one stupid kid, you know that?”
MJ snuck back to the bathroom and stood by the doorway to listen. “I told you before, I’d do anything to spend another minute with the people I love and you’ve got yours standing in the other room crying over you. I mean, shit kid. Are you trying to kill yourself? Even I have someone to go to when I need patching up and at least if I croak no one's crying over it.”
MJ frowned at that and peeked around the corner, watching Frank squeeze the ambu bag with one hand and hold the blood and saline bag up with the other. He was frowning and shaking his head as he looked between Peter and the bag of blood he was holding.
“I know it’s been a rough few years for you but this was just…fucked. You gotta take care of yourself for her, you know? I get the tough it out, do it alone thing but it’s not sustainable. We aren’t built for it. We’re not made to be alone. You’re supposed to have someone to go home to. And I know, you don’t care about you getting hurt or dying even. You just want to keep her safe. But heres the thing genius. All she wants is you safe. So, you gotta know when to tap out so you can come home to her, for her.”
MJ watched something pass over Franks face, love in a memory and a grief that it was gone. MJ had seen this very briefly on him before but interestingly it wasn't the steel mask that came after this time it was almost a peaceful new kind of fondness as he looked back down at Peter and smiled a little. “Ah, whatever. I’ll tell you all this over again when you're awake to argue back at me.”
MJ snuck back from the bathroom door and wondered not for the first time what kind of man Frank had been before life had taken his family from him.