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The first thing Peter realises as he wakes up is that he’s sitting upright in a chair. The second thing he realises is that he’s tied to said chair by ropes. Ropes that won't break no matter how hard he struggles, apparently vibranium ropes are a thing now and theyre being used to tie him up after a kidnapping. Not what he expected to happen this Thursday, but not the weirdest thing that's happened to him, so ok. He needs to remain calm and look around to observe his surroundings—
His surroundings currently involve unconscious and tied up avengers, similar to how he assumes he was a minute ago. Avengers, who –excluding Tony Stark– have never seen him before, and Tony Stark who only knows him as a genius high school intern. Peter is so screwed.
The drug clearly wore off him much faster than the others, including the supersoldiers, meaning they didn't think to increase his dose like he assumes they did for Steve and Bucky. Everyone else's ropes also have the same metal shine as his do, so it's a very real possibility the kidnappers don't actually know he's Spider-man and kidnapped him purely because he is Tony Stark’s intern? God, he hopes it's that.
Maybe he's not as screwed as he thought?
Now he has to play the long game and pretend to be asleep till the others are waking up because he doesn't want to wake up too fast and risk being suspicious.
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Roughly an hour after Peter first woke up, Natasha starts to rouse from her drug induced sleep and not long after the rest start to follow. After around 5 minutes, Steve and Bucky were the last to wake, presumably because the doses and/or drugs administered to them were altered and the kidnappers didn’t want to take any chances with those two waking up too early. He wonders if he woke up too late because now all the Avengers are staring at him.
Wait.
The Avengers are staring at him.
Well great. This is absolutely amazing.
“Peter?” Tony says, and although he's grateful there's someone who can at least prove his identity to be not one of the kidnappers, he’d really prefer for it not to be Tony. The man is neither dismissive nor composed when it comes to Peter's wellbeing meaning he absolutely cannot rely on him to remain calm as an adult. The last time he got a papercut Mr. Stark acted like his finger had been cut off.
To his right, Sam questions Tony about who the random kid is (rude, he's right there and also not that short) but he gets completely ignored in favour of fussing over Peter.
“I’m his intern,” Peter turns to Sam as best he can while still restrained, replying in Tony’s stead, but Tony seems to latch onto it and it fuels his overdramatic side
“EXACTLY!! INTERN! WHY ARE YOU HERE!?!?” Tony cries while stressing the word ‘intern’ as if that changes anything.
“How am I supposed to know!?!?" Peter responds back, positively baffled. What could possibly give him the impression that Peter of all people knows if the Avengers themselves don't know?
Tony opens his mouth to reply but gets interrupted by a very annoyed looking Bucky Barnes telling both of them to shut up which– fair but Peter barely talked!! He doesn't get the chance to protest before a man with greasy brown hair and yellowing teeth– presumably someone responsible for the kidnapping given none of the Avengers seem to recognise him– walks into the room.
If its only that one man, Peter might be able to bait him into untying one of them who can knock him out so they can make a run for it.
Almost as if to disprove his point, two armed guards trail after him a moment later and lock the door behind them. No making a run for it, they'll have to fight their way out. Damned Parker luck.
“What do you want?” Steve speaks up for the first time –probably due to the effect of the drugs making him drowsy till now– and glares at the first man as the leader of the group.
“Well, that's simple. All we want is access to all the old and new Stark Industry weapons, as well as the Avenger restricted ones,” the man replies smoothly, his eyes lingering on Peter and a sly grin on his face as he explains to the wary Avengers.
Peter decides to look around at the reactions of the Avengers rather than continue to look at the kidnappers who were admittedly starting to creep him out. Natasha, who has yet to speak, appears to be studying the group in front of them, hopefully for weaknesses they can exploit because Peter doesn't know how to help and really doesn't want to be here anymore. To be fair, it wasn't like he wanted to be kidnapped to begin with, but now he wants it even less because the kidnappers eyes give him the chills. Steve is still glaring at them but Bucky has joined too and Peter thinks they're also studying them to some extent. Tony looks aghast and full of dread but not shocked. Bruce, on the other hand, looks shocked, pale and positively terrified. Peter kind of feels bad for the guy. Before he can get a good look at Sam, Tony speaks up.
“Absolutely not. You're insane if you think we’ll ever give anything to you,” he pauses, “Other than toothpaste, for the sake of the world, you look like you could use some” he scoffs, slowly regaining his composure.
“I think you will~ Have you forgotten we have your precious intern hostage? I'm sure you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him,” the kidnapper –who he's now naming Bob because he doesn't deserve a more creative name– teases.
“You might reconsider your choices after watching your intern go through a little, for example, torture," Bob says and in an instant, the two guards start to tie more ropes around the Avengers mouths’– gagging them.
Maybe Peter is screwed after all, even if they don't know his identity. He’s sure he can take a little torture right? Right? He can't afford to let the kidnappers get what they want. Nobody can. He also can't afford them knowing his identity because that would put everyone he knows in danger and they can't afford that. Hopefully if he doesn't cry out, they'll give up and leave which'll give them the opportunity to escape.
“You wouldn't," Tony says but he's gone pale and it feels more like he's trying to convince himself. Any further protests are cut off by one of the guards roughly grabbing his face and shoving rope into his mouth. That's all of them gagged except Peter now.
Bob starts to advance threateningly towards him, his grin only widening as he gets closer, the other two trailing behind him.
Oh god, they're really going to torture him aren't they?
Bob stops around 4 feet away from him and procures a knife from god knows where while the other two undo his bindings except for the ones on his legs while holding him upright by his arms. ‘I kind of looks like a chicken now,’ Peter laughs to himself, as an attempt to distract himself from what's happening because fighting back would compromise his identity. Peter goes along with them and sends a shaky smile Tony's way to hopefully prove he can handle it. Even if he's not sure he can himself, he needs to. Even if he can't bear to properly look at the man. He might have let out a muffled shout or struggled in his chair but Peter doesn't know because stopped paying attention to him.
The two guards drag him closer to Bob and nausea rises in the back of his throat. Bob gets the guards to lift his shirt and traces the skin of his abdomen with the tip of the knife, teasing, before slamming the blade down into his abdomen. Hard.
White hot pain explodes from his abdomen and he barely suppresses a scream, instead clenching his teeth together and holding his breath.
Peter’s completely fine. He can handle it. It's just one stab wound. If they’re really committed they'll do so much worse to him to get those damn weapons. He needs to persevere so they don't get possession of them and threaten the safety of New York.
He tries to take a deep breath in but chokes and it comes out as a muffled sob.
He can't do this.
Tears form in his eyes.
He needs to get their hands off of him.
His skin grows clammy.
He’s going to die here.
He bites his lip, drawing blood.
He doesn't need to put up with this if they can't hurt anyone.
He yanks his arms free from their hands.
It hurts.
He clenches the handle of the knife still implanted in him and pulls.
The pain doubles, and hot blood trickles down from his abdomen. Still holding the knife in one hand, he runs into Bob, toppling him over but going down with him– courtesy of the tied ankles.
He manages to get one punch in before one of the guards drag him away, he hopes that's enough to knock him out without causing serious damage.
The guard tries to pin him face down underneath him but Peter refuses to let that happen. He struggles and manages to push the guard off and accidentally punches them in the stomach too hard, sending them flying across the room into the wall. The wall which now has a very human-shaped crater on it. Whoops.
The guard coughs and gasps for air from where he's crumpled and curled in on himself on the floor, but otherwise seems mostly fine. Under normal circumstances, Peter would feel bad for the guy, but he was not going to feel bad for someone who was about to assist in his torturing.
The second guard looks scared out of his mind and is now desperately fumbling with his keys to get out. Peter lets him, partly because he doesn't have it in him to stop him, but also because there's no point.
Other than his secret identity.
His secret identity which just got blown in front of nearly the entire Avengers team.
The Avengers who are silent and staring at him yet again.
The fight drains out of him as the adrenaline fades and he feels agony take over his entire body. Taking a deep breath, he drags himself to the closest Avenger –Bruce– and scrapes his arms as he pulls himself across the concrete floor, leaving behind a trail of blood, clumsily untying him before promptly passing out.