a/n: me vs giving peter the jason todd treatment
Spooktober 29: Cave In
On Friday, Peter's last class is Geometry.
"You won't get away with this," one of his classmates spits out, "they have cameras, and evidence, and—"
"Be quiet," Peter rasps to them quietly, his arms shaking to hold himself up. It was truly the worst day for him to be dealing with an injury.
"I don't need to get away with it," his substitute teacher snaps. The same guy that's been setting off his senses for the whole week. He grins sourly. "I don't care about getting away with it."
His last class is Geometry, and, little detail— the damn substitute won't let them leave, and Peter can smell the malicious intent coming off him in waves.
A classmate of his sobs. Peter tucks his arm close to his chest, an unconscious effort to shield his broken rib, and steps forward.
"Hey, just let everyone go," Peter says calmly, his other hand outstretched in front of him like he's taming a wild animal. "We can talk this out. What do you want? You want money?"
He's not entirely sure why his substitute geo teacher is attempting to kidnap a bunch of high schoolers, but he's definitely not going to just let it happen. He's gotta play this carefully, though. He's not Spider-Man. He's a very normal guy who does normal things in his spare time, like build legos and procrastinate on his ap chem homework.
"Money?" The man laughs, crazed. "You have no idea... how long I've waited... and you think I want money..."
The man continues to laugh, doubling over, and tears come to his eyes. He looks miserable. He looks... not in his right mind.
"What are you talking about?" Peter asks carefully.
"You," the man snaps. His gaze goes sharp, the smile dropping in an instant. "You. Peter Parker. You have in internship with Stark, don't you?"
Shiiiiit.
Peter swallows. He nods, slowly, cautiously. "You wanna talk to Tony Stark?"
The man takes a step toward him. The students behind Peter are shaking, he can hear how their hearts race.
"You know I read the news, Peter Parker?" The man says instead. His green eyes look yellow in the light, and Peter feels afraid, his hair is standing on end. He wishes he had a mask to hide behind.
"According to the tabloids," the man sniffs disinterestedly, "you're the son of a certain Tony Stark."
...Wait, what?
Peter freezes. "I am?"
Everybody behind him freezes.
It's so quiet they could hear a pin drop.
"I mean," Peter coughs loudly, and oh, he's about to perform the most Oscar-worthy performance of his life. "I— I am, but how did you know that? That was... a secret, that's supposed to be— that's supposed to be a secret."
The man looks pleased by his sudden discomfort, grinning snidely. "Well, you've been figured out. I know all about you and your rich Avenger dad. Everyone knows how he fawns over you, twists himself into knots when you need saving. He's a good dad, isn't he?"
Peter had a weird, squirmy feeling in his chest, because he knows Tony isn't his dad. The very notion, actually, is ridiculous. But, tabloids are notorious for being ridiculous, and somehow they've ended him in the precarious situation of thinking of Tony as his...
'Twists himself into knots' is a strongly worded choice of words. Tony doesn't...
Then he's thinking about literally last night, where it took him a solid forty-five minute phonecall to convince Tony that he'd still be okay to go to school with his broken ribs, he's just gotta be careful, blah blah blah, and yes, he may have lied through his teeth about how fast he heals, and yes, he is sort-of kind-of paying for it now.
He thinks about Tony calling him again this morning before he got on the bus, how tired he'd been, how he let slip entirely on accident that he'd stayed up all night just in case Peter called.
("Maybe you needed pain meds or you realized you had actually fucked up your lungs when you knocked your rib cage out of place," Tony had said, and Peter could hear the eyeroll as he spoke. "Jeez, you always gotta ask so many questions? Respect your elders.")
"I—" He pauses, and then nods. He speaks quietly next, because he's admitting this only to himself—
"Yeah, he is. He's a good dad."
"So was I." The man clears his throat and pulls out a remote of some kind. His smile curves sardonically. "Then, my daughter stayed home sick from school one day, and Iron Man crashed an alien Chitauri ship into the side of our house."
Peter's shoulders draw up, his jaw clenching firmly. "What are you going to do?"
"Kidnapped by terrorists, flown into a wormhole, lost all his team, and he's still standing..." The man presses a button on the remote. He sits down on the desk calmly. "I wonder if the death of a son will be the thing that breaks him."
Peter's senses go crazy, like every nerve is on fire. He moves quick, jumps at the source of the danger, and then—
BOOM.
God, that hurts.
"Peter!"
Everything hurts.
"Fucking shit, Peter, where are you?! Make a sound if you can hear me!"
He's definitely sporting more than just a broken rib, now.
"FRIDAY, crank the audio sensitivity up to max, filter out anything that's inorganic—"
His ears are ringing, one high, reverberating note that is stinging his brain. His eyes feel glued shut, and his throat is full of chalk, or dust, or something, because he can hardly swallow.
There's something warm dripping from his head— it smells like metal. Experience tells him that's probably not good.
He tries to speak, to get his mouth to work, his vocal cords to do the things he wants them to do, but they're stubborn. He can't even let out a weak cough. He feels weirdly weighed down, even his chest.
He lets out a wheezy, shaky breath, and imagines himself yelling— I'm right here, Tony, please come here, Tony, something is wrong, Tony, there's danger, Tony, I need help to fix it, I need you—
"Kid? Kid, is that you?! Keep breathing, come on! Gimme another one, come on, use those lungs, kiddo."
If Peter wasn't dealing with the sudden and crippling pain that was increasing by the second, he would have laughed. Tony encouraging him to do something as silly and simple as breathing, as if he were running an Olympic race instead.
Instead he sucked in the biggest breath he could, which was admittedly a whispy little thing, and let it out, trembling and shivering past his lips.
"Find him," Tony demanded, frantic. "FRIDAY, where is he? Damn it, find him! I hear you, I hear you, sweetheart. It'll be okay."
Peter tries to call his name, and it comes out more as a faint, choked out whisper. He tries again, and again, and again, remembering a different time where he was under a building, a time where he almost didn't get out.
"I hear you, I hear you," Tony repeats, meanwhile. Tears are slipping through the knitted forest of his shut eyelashes, and he's just thinking, please let him find me in time, please let everybody be okay, please make the pain go away.
The weight releases, and Peter sucks in a breath just because he can— it burns in his lungs, his ribs are screaming at him in pain, but he swallows and makes himself speak.
"Tony," he stifles. "Tony? I can't—"
"I'm here," Tony says. Peter relaxes into the rubble. "Can you open your eyes?"
"You're here." Peter repeats this quietly to himself.
His eyes wrench themselves open, and it hurts, all the light, he has to squint through the particles of concrete and drywall that haven't settled yet. But Tony is here, crouching down in shiny red and gold, the bright blue eyes of his helmet shining right at him.
"Is everyone okay?" Peter asks, a hand coming up to grip the armor-clad wrist. It suddenly becomes very frighteningly clear to him that this isn't some shitty nightmare; but that they are literally sitting in the remains of his geometry class, and he wasn't alone when the bomb went off.
"The students?" Tony shoves some other chunks of brick and wood, bits from the wall, from the desks, the bookshelves, burnt paper and such, away from Peter's body. "They're all fine, they're already evacuated and being seen by medics. Everyone but you, kid. So let's get you out of here."
Peter grunts, letting himself be lifted up in Tony's arms. His ribs twinge. Blood is sort of getting in his eyes, which is annoying. "The— the sub?"
"He's being taken care of," Tony answers ominously. Peter's pretty sure he doesn't imagine the way its inflection is tinged a deep, dark red. "As for you, you've royally screwed over your healing ribs. They're broke all over again, with some new ones to spare. I'm thinking we binge all your Netflix movies that you've been stockpiling like a pack rat before they take em off. Because that matters to you, for some reason, even though I can buy you every movie that..."
Peter's mind drifts off as Tony carries him out of the school. He's safe, everybody is safe. He thinks back to what the man said to him... he can remember each word with a startling clarity. Dads and loss and love, and the clicking of wires before everything went dark— and somehow he's here, and Tony's here, and it's all okay again.
He's a good dad, isn't he?
"Hey," Tony's voice shakes him from his thoughts. "From now on, how bout I profile your teachers before you get blown up?"
"Yeah," Peter murmurs, his sweaty hair curling against an armored shoulder. "Sounds good."