Chapter Text
Steve, Bucky, and Sam were the last ones really left in the tower. They’d really hung back to watch Happy send the ship off and then sat down to have a couple last drinks in the familiar common room (well, Sam was drinking. Steve and Buck were just there for the conversation). They were just chilling, relaxing for a while before they forced themselves to make the couple-hour drive up to the new base, when the ship starts crashing through the city.
“Uh… didn’t Happy say everything was going smoothly?” Sam looks around the room, eyes wide. Bucky and Steve were on their feet, Steve already on his phone to call Tony.
“Yup.” Bucky confirms, walking closer to the balcony and staring out the window. There was a large explosion in the distance as the ship crashed on the beach, the light from the flames bathing the horizon in warm light. “Really looks like it’s going smoothly, if you ask me.” He says tersely.
Both men turn towards Steve for instruction. He speaks quietly on the phone, eyes distant.
“Yes well your plane just crash landed on Coney Island, so maybe you should check back in with Happy.” There is a pause as he listens to Tony’s response. “I think we should go down there.” Pause. “Yes, because the fact that it’s crashed really means that things are just dandy.” A longer pause. “… Fine. Call us if you need us.” He hangs up and turns to the other two.
“Stark reportedly has everything under control.”
“Bullshit.” Bucky snorts.
“Well he is the man in charge.” Steve responds as he sits back down, clearly agitated. “It’s his plane.”
Sam huffs and grabs his beer, emptying it in the sink. “And to think we thought this was going to be an easy night.” He laughs humorlessly.
“It’s never an easy night.” Steve grunts.
They spent the next half hour waiting tensely for something to happen. They turn on the news, following the story as closely as they could and itching for an update from Tony. They are almost starting to relax as news of a clean-up crew entering the scene went live.
And then there is a dull thud from outside as a ragged looking young man in a blue and red onesie lands on the balcony.
Steve is on his feet in half a second.
“What the – ” Sam and Bucky follow him towards the door, where Onesie is lurching forwards as quickly as he can. They see of the spider insignia on his chest and Steve’s breath catches in his throat.
“Spider-Man?”
The man stumbles inside and is barely a step in when his legs give and he drops towards the ground. Steve catches him and looked up to Bucky and Sam. They all share a quiet, stunned look for a moment before jumping into action.
Steve picks him up and placed him on the sofa. “Call Stark.” He instructs immediately, already tearing Spider-Man’s top off. He has to force himself not to look away as he catches sight of the other hero’s torso, molted with bruising and swelling, flesh torn from the area above his left him in a violent, bloody hole. Bucky hisses a breath and grabs his phone. Sam runs towards the elevator to grab a first-aid kit from the medical facilities on the lower floors.
This was really an awful night to have an empty tower.
“Stark, you know anything about Spider-Man?” Bucky grunts into the phone, bypassing a greeting.
“Well he left my plane-snatcher gift wrapped with all the cargo on Coney Island.” Tony replies. “Even left me a note.” His voice wis thin, reedy, his stress audible. “Why?”
“He’s in the tower in a pair of pajamas looking like he just survived a plane crash.” Buck sasses. “Oh, wait. He did.” He growls lowly. “Spider-Man has been your side project, right? So maybe you should come over here with enough medical staff to fill a hospital so he doesn’t die.”
“He’s there? Really? Wh – ” Bucky hangs up and turns back to Steve and Spidey.
Steve had taken Spider-Man’s pants and mask off, and was staring at his face with a strained, sorrowful expression. Okay so… Spider-Man was a stretch. A big stretch. The kid looks like he couldn’t be more than fourteen. The way his limbs are twisted and swollen and bruised is suddenly made more horrifying with the youth of his face revealed.
Steve is going to fucking kill Tony Stark.
><><
When Peter wakes up, it’s to blinding pain that stabs every cell in his body. His breath shakes and his eyes flutter open, unseeing in the sudden bright light until they adjust. When he does look around the room, his gaze lands on Mr. Stark standing against the wall. His arms are crossed and his body is stiff as he stares at Peter.
“Hey Mr. Stark.” Peter tries to sit up, voice small and rough. “Did you get my note?” He forces a smile, masking his pain with a poor attempt at humor, and Mr. Stark just stiffens.
“Why would you do that?” Stark asks, deathly quiet.
“Do what?” Peter barely finishes asking before Mr. Stark is talking again.
“Why would you let yourself get hurt!?” He raises his voice to a yell through the sentence, all composure gone. “Why would you keep going when you were almost – you know, if you die, you’re my responsibility. Did you really want me to have to tell your aunt you were dead?!” He punctuates his shout with a hand slamming against the frame of the bed Peter is lying in, close enough to him to make him flinch.
“Mr. Stark, I – ”
“No, no don’t you go ‘Mr. Stark’-ing me! You attached yourself to a plane! You can’t fly! What if you had fallen? I’m sure people would have been so happy to see you in your pajamas splat somewhere in the middle of New York.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Peter yells back, unable to stop himself. He bites his lip and continues more softly. “What was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t listen to me about Mr. Toomes. If – If he had gotten your supplies and made more alien weapons, that would have been on me. I couldn’t just stop.”
He looks into Mr. Stark’s eyes, pleading. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the older man look as frail and as stressed as he does right now. Peter did this. Guilt starts to creep into his heart, and he forces a grin, trying to will back his tears.
“I gotta stick up for the little guy.” Peter doesn’t think he’s ever felt smaller. “You know?”
Mr. Stark clenches his teeth and storms out of the room. Peter lowers himself back into the pillows, wincing.
He was sure at the time that he was doing the right thing, but maybe… maybe he should have just left the job to the professionals. The adults. The Avengers.
><><
Steve Rogers, THE Captain America, walks into Peter’s room not long after that. It’s so soon after Peter stops crying that he has to wonder if Mr. Rogers had been waiting and watching for a good time to come in. He sends the man a smile.
“Captain.” He greets, offering a weak solute. “It’s an honor to meet you. Shame it has to be with the whole…” He gestures vaguely to himself, not entirely sure if he himself is referring to his injuries or who he is as a person under the mask.
“Call me Steve.” Steve smiles gently, pulling up a chair to Peter’s bedside. “Peter Parker, right?”
“Yeah.” There goes his whole secret identity.
Steve’s stare is gentle. “How are you feeling?”
“Great. Like I could run a marathon.” Peter laughs quietly, and then fails at trying to hide his wince. Laughing hurts when you have lots of broken ribs, he notes silently. Steve’s sympathetic stare doesn’t falter.
“Son, you did a good thing tonight.” He begins. Peter can feel the ‘but’ from a mile away. “A great thing tonight. You saved a lot of people from being hurt. It’s just a shame that you were hurt in the process.”
Oh. So no ‘but’, really. That was new. And kind of nice.
“I heal really fast anyways.” Peter says softly. “In a couple days I’ll be back on patrol like nothing happened.”
“Peter, it’s never going to be like nothing happened.” Steve places a hand on his shoulder. “Can you tell me exactly what occurred tonight?”
Peter looks into Steve’s eyes, finding nothing but sincerity and good intentions. It’s a drastic difference from the anxiety and hurt that he saw in Mr. Stark’s. He wants to cry again.
He takes a deep breath and reports in. He pretends he doesn’t taste the gravel and smoke in the back of his throat, pretends he can’t already see the muddy puddle in front of his face, pretends the world is closing in on him like the thousands of pounds of concrete had, and he reports in.
He then pretends he doesn’t see the same anxiety and hurt from Mr. Stark slowly bleed into Steve’s expression.