Chapter Text
It begins with a bruise.
To be fair to what seems like an unremarkable beginning, the bruise is an impressive one: it roams the length of his right side from his hip almost all the way to his armpit, shaped like a fat bolt of lightning and the color of spilled motor oil. Peter obtains said bruise when the Villain of the Week (as he’s taken to calling them, much to May’s displeasure: she thinks he’s being flippant about his would-be nemeses. In reality Peter is just being literal; lately it feels like these weirdos must coordinate their schedules to mess up his Mondays) flings him through an ancient billboard advertising a 1997 run of the musical Cats.
“I’m starting to think you have something against our feline friends,” says Peter, after he’s caught himself with a web to a nearby fire escape and scrambled back to the rooftop where the guy is waiting, wearing a pair of skin-tight leopard print leggings, a fur vest, and a snarl to match the one painted on the face of whatever Broadway washout’s face Peter just decimated. “Whatever cat wronged you, I promise, violence is not the answer.” He flings a web at the guy, who dodges it with a roar. “Especially not with cats. You should see the scratches I get off the ones in trees around here, man, and those are the ones I’m trying to help.”
The Villain of the Week answers this by tossing a net—an honest to God net—over Peter’s head.
There’s not much time to think about the bruise after that, what with the cat-hating (or possibly cat-loving? The outfit does not offer an explanation for itself, though it totally owes the world at least that much for, you know, existing) evil dude and his net to keep Peter occupied.
He doesn’t think about it much that evening, either, barely glancing at it in the mirror as he strips out of the suit and clambers into a much-needed shower. He’s used to bruises. Bruises of all shapes and sizes, colors and creeds. If he had a nickel for every bruise, and yada yada yada. Add to that the fact that this one, for all its vibrant color, barely even hurts, and it’s a wonder it even gets its cursory glance in the bathroom mirror at all.
The bruise only becomes remarkable the next day. Because unlike its innumerable counterparts, this bruise is still there when Peter wakes up the next morning.
In retrospect Peter will recognize that he probably should have done something then. He’s been Spider-Man for over a year now, which might not seem like a long time until one takes into consideration what he’s done: Fought Captain America. Defeated the Vulture. Travelled to a hostile exoplanet to battle a megalomaniac alien warlord hellbent on humanity’s destruction. Let him never forget that last one.
(He can’t. He tries.)
The point is, the training wheels are fully off, and Peter has had enough experience and enough lectures from those with more of it to know that he is supposed to get himself checked out when things go weird, particularly when those things are his powers. Extra particularly when the specific thing is his healing power, which, above all the others, is definitely the only reason he’s still alive today.
But he doesn’t.
He has a t-shirt already halfway over his head, his hair all flat on one side from sleeping with rocklike stillness all night, when he notices it in his bedroom mirror. For a minute his brow furrows as he traces the outline of the bruise with his fingertips. It’s yellow around the edges, so it’s healed some, more than a normal person could hope for in a night, but about a hundred times less than he’s used to. It still doesn’t hurt that bad, but it doesn’t look good. Like, don’t-ever-let-May-see-this kind of not good.
Peter’s eyes dart to the StarkPhone on his desk. The unsmashable, waterproof, upgraded-with-alien-tech, one-of-a-kind StarkPhone that Tony gave him after Thanos and told him to use if he was ever out of the suit and in need of assistance.
“Any little thing,” Tony had said as he handed it over. “Large or small. Pick it up. Use it. And try not to be too weird about it, kid, because the whole watery-eyed thing you’re doing is giving me reflux already.”
Peter promised that he would. And then—nothing. Radio silence on both ends.
Looking at it now, Peter knows he doesn’t want to be the one to break that silence. And certainly not over something as insignificant as a bruise.
He pulls the shirt the rest of the way on, stuffs the StarkPhone into the bottom of his bag like he does every day, and he goes to school.
Here’s the thing: Peter isn’t trying to be vindictive about the no-contact deal. He knows it’s probably not intentional, this silence from Tony. Not like the whole post-Germany, pre-Homecoming era, when an occasional disdainful text from Happy was the closest he got to any word from the man. He also knows that the whole “You died in my arms, kid,” thing is probably a lot to come to terms with. He knows it’s a lot to come to terms with, because he’s spent pretty much the whole time they’ve been back coming to terms with it himself. So, yes, he gets it. Tony needs time. Tony needs space.
Or maybe not so much space. Space, Peter thinks, they have both had enough of.
Time though, for sure. The only problem is, it’s been months since Thanos and he’s only seen Tony twice: once, at the memorial service for the fallen, where Tony had given him the phone. Another time in Manhattan, when they’d teamed up with Wanda and Black Widow to fight some pretty sub-par but nevertheless numerous Doom Bots. That had been the first time they’d been together as something like a team since the incident, and Peter really hoped that Tony would suggest they talk—or at the very least like, grab a slice of pizza—after the last of the crappy bots were rounded up. Instead he’d gotten an ironic salute and a “Nice job, kid,” before Tony had blasted off into the sunset, leaving Peter alone in the middle of the cleanup crew.
Peter has the phone. He knows Tony wouldn’t have given it to him if he didn’t mean for him to use it. It’s just that Peter really thought, what with the fact that he was the one who actually, you know, died, maybe this time Tony would be the one to make the first move.
So he doesn’t call about the bruise.
He doesn’t call about the next one, either, because even though that one takes longer to heal than the first, it’s a lot smaller and again, just a bruise. And so is the one after that. And the one after that.
Everything else seems to be in working order, though. He’s scaling walls and slinging webs and punching dudes in rhino and lizard and octopus costumes in the face, because apparently it’s animal theme month in New York City and he’s the unwitting zookeeper. So he has to get a little better at blending foundation, so what? Peter’s a modern man. He can rock a little makeup. Especially if it means he doesn’t have to be the first to break in this quiet game whose rules he does not, admittedly, really understand.
It’s really not a big deal.
Until, all of a sudden, it really is.
Peter would much rather it had happened in the middle of a fight. He has no problem passing out when he’s just, say, taken a mechanical fist to the skull, or been flung off the Brooklyn Bridge, or whatever. Passing out when you’re getting your ass kicked by a supervillain is at worst a free pass, at best a badge of honor and a couple thousand extra views on YouTube.
Passing out in the middle of decathlon practice? Not so much.
The one plus side is that it happens too quickly for Peter to know what’s coming. One second he’s standing up to take the podium for his turn as grandmaster during lightning rounds. The next he’s flat on his back, blinking up at a circle of worried faces, plus MJ’s impassive one, looming down at him like a ring of close-set planets around a very nauseated sun.
“It’s not a bad tactic if you’re stumped,” says MJ, who is the first to offer him a hand, “but maybe next time just admit you don’t know how to pronounce ‘iridocyclitis.’”
She pulls him into a sitting position while half a dozen other hands guide him there. Peter blinks while his vision spins, still trying to figure out how he got on the floor.
“You okay there, Parker?” says Mr. Harrington, who looks bemused and awkward as he pushes into Peter’s eyeline. “I called the nurse, just—uh—maybe stay on the ground for a minute.”
“What?” Peter’s thoughts are still fuzzy and his pulse feels erratic, but at the word nurse he regains some clarity. The last thing he needs is anyone with any sort of medical expertise examining him. There’s a reason overlarge flannels are his shirt of choice. Hello, unearned biceps. “No—really Mr. Harrington, I’m fine. I just must have stood up too fast. I, uh, I skipped lunch.”
“You ate four peanut butter sandwiches,” says MJ. “It barely counts as food, but it counts.”
Peter tries to throw her a look that conveys just how much of a traitor and a stalker she is, but he’s pretty sure it just comes off as a vague grimace. MJ returns this with an unblinking stare.
Peter looks around until he finds Ned’s face among those clustered around them, and sees that he, at least, knows Peter isn’t suffering from low blood sugar. Ned jerks his head at the door while no one’s looking, and Peter nods as subtly as he can.
“Mr. Harrington, I can take him home,” says Ned. “I just got my license, and my mom let me borrow her car today.”
“I’m ninety percent sure that’s not the procedure in passing out-type situations, Ned. Peter, why don’t you—?”
But Peter is already scrambling to his feet.
“No, really, I’m good, I’m totally fine,” he says. “My aunt is a nurse, she can—you know… take a look… anyway, I’ll see you all at practice on Thursday.”
And he and Ned hightail it out of the auditorium.
In the hallway, safely around several corners and alone, Peter leans against a row of lockers and feels his own pulse while Ned hovers around him anxiously. It feels thready and fast, which is extra worrying, because Peter’s heart has beat strong and slow ever since the spider bite. With one notable exception.
“What was that, Peter?” says Ned, who is peering at him like a doddery grandma. He’s practically wringing his hands. “Did you really not eat enough?” He glances over his shoulder and lowers his voice. “Was it one of your—you know— space nightmares?”
Peter’s been having night terrors. Not all the time, but often enough that he should have known not to spend the night at Ned’s a few weeks ago. Now Ned knows, even if he doesn’t know the extent of what happened to cause them. Ned, thankfully, was not there—nor was he in Wakanda, so to him the whole thing is just another vaguely scary alien battle, more distant than the one that happened in New York and therefore infinitely cooler.
“No,” says Peter. “No, those only happen when I’m, y’know, asleep. And stop calling them space nightmares, you make me feel like I’m in an episode of The Twilight Zone. And not the good ones. The crappy nineties remake.”
“Except you do have space nightmares. Nightmares about the time you were in space, Peter. Which, okay, I know it can’t have been all awesome and whatever, but still, you have to admit that is the coolest thing that anyone could possibly have nightmares about.”
“Still nightmares, Ned.”
Peter lifts his hands to his face, and sees that they are trembling slightly. He feels flu-ish, which is also worrying: he hasn’t been sick since the night of the bite.
Ned’s smile fades.
“For real though,” he says, “what happened back there?”
Peter shakes his head. “Maybe I just did stand up to fast,” he says. “Can you actually take me home, Ned? Maybe I should, um, lay down for a while.”
“Yeah, for sure man.”
Ned loads Peter into his mom’s minivan and spends the ride home expounding on theories about Peter’s sudden low blood pressure, the main of which involves the hydraulic lymph system by which spiders operate.
“—and that’s why when they die, spiders get all curled up and crunchy,” he concludes as they pull up to the curb outside Peter’s apartment. “Do you think maybe that’s what happened to you?”
Peter, who is already halfway out the door and trying not to think to hard about these dying spiders that Ned is enthusing about, says, “I’ll look into it, Ned, but I’m pretty sure I’m still full of human blood.”
“Uh, yeah you are.” Ned’s expression goes suddenly serious. “Look at your wrist, dude.”
Peter rolls his sleeve back automatically, and feels a sinking in his stomach that has nothing to do with low blood pressure or dried-up lymph fluid.
There is a ring of mottled bruises around his wrist, so purple they are almost black. More worrying than their color is the fact that Peter has done absolutely nothing to put them there.
“Peter…” says Ned.
Peter pulls his sleeve down.
“Thanks for the ride,” he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”
He slams the door before Ned can say anything else, and runs inside before he hears the car pull away. Takes the elevator to the apartment, and is relieved that May is still at work, because the first thing he does is pull out the StarkPhone. Leaning against the doorway, Peter takes a few calming breaths, sets his jaw, and dials.
“On a scale of one to ten, how sure are you that you don’t want me to call Tony?”
Dr. Banner hunches when he sits on his little stool, peering up at Peter—sat opposite him, though higher, upon a chrome-steel examining table—with a doubtful look on his face. Peter has noticed this about Bruce, the few times he’s been around him in Bruce form—it’s like he tries to make himself smaller to compensate for how big he can get.
“Fourteen,” says Peter. “Make that, like, twenty-nine. I am three thousand percent sure I don’t want you to call him.”
“So that’s a yes on being sure?”
Peter gives him a much better withering look than he managed to give MJ. Bruce raises his hands in surrender.
“Just making sure,” he says. “I’ll just get back to this, shall I?”
He returns to the blood-draw kit he has been preparing, while Peter watches him, wary. He knows it’s irrational, but he’ll take being thrown through a cat-man’s face over needles any day.
“Why would I even have to call Tony in the first place?” he says irritably, mainly to distract himself while Bruce ties the tourniquet around his bicep. “It’s not like he’s my dad.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Bruce vaguely, gesturing to their surroundings. “It’s his multi-million dollar facility. You’re his multi-million dollar Spider-Kid. And I’ll just stop talking now, how about that?”
Bruce has correctly interpreted Peter’s stony expression.
They are indeed in Tony’s multi-million dollar facility. More specifically, they are in the Avengers’ Headquarters upstate. Peter asked Bruce to meet him at a time when Tony was not there, and Bruce obliged, albeit reluctantly. Peter is pleased that it didn’t take too much persuading; less pleased that he won’t be reimbursed for the frankly massive Uber fee he shelled out to get here. There goes science camp next summer. He’ll have to tell Aunt May he’s outgrown it—like she won’t see through that bald-faced lie. But he didn’t want to have to ask her to take him, because that would require explaining why he was going, and after everything he’s put her through this past year there is no way he’s going to freak her out for what is probably nothing more than an iron deficiency.
“Here we go,” says Bruce, and Peter winces as the needle goes in.
They both watch his blood pump into the three little medical tubes Bruce has laid out, Bruce switching them deftly enough that he doesn’t so much as jostle Peter as he does.
“I always half expect it to come out green,” says Peter.
“Hey, that’s my schtick, kid,” says Bruce, popping off the last of the vials and removing the needle to another little wince from Peter. “You’re all red, as far as I can tell.” He touches one of the bruises on Peter’s arm. It’s a new one. They’ve been appearing all over for the past few days, ever since Peter passed out at practice. “Maybe a little too much?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” says Peter dismissively. “I probably need to take a vitamin or something.”
“That’s probably it,” says Bruce. “Well, I’ll get this to the lab. It might take me a few hours to get all of the results, do you have something you can do while you wait?”
“Yeah, I have homework.”
Bruce gives a little shudder.
“Yech,” he says. Then, “Sorry. I just get a little” —he makes a wavering gesture with his hands— “when I remember how young you are.”
Peter jumps off the exam table to avoid Bruce’s eye, grabs his flannel from the chair and pulls it over his bruised arms.
“Sorry, ki—I mean, sorry, Pete,” says Bruce. “It’s not so much a symptom of your age as it is a symptom of mine.”
Peter looks up, manages a smile.
“You going upstairs?” says Bruce. “I know Wanda would love to see you, she’s been raving about you since Manhattan.”
Peter’s stomach ratchets down another few notches. He likes Wanda, likes her a lot, but he’s not sure he can handle being called adorable in six different Romanian dialects right now.
It must show in his face, because Bruce says, “Something wrong?”
“Oh—no. I just, I didn’t think anyone else would be around, that’s all.”
Bruce considers him for a minute.
“You wanna come to the lab?” he says.
Peter nods gratefully. He grabs his backpack and Bruce claps a hand on his shoulder before leading the way out of the medical hall. Peter tries not to read too far into the fact that he does this very gently.
Peter sets up his homework at a table in the corner while Bruce goes to work. They pass the first half hour or so in amicable silence, but after a while Peter starts to get that prickly feeling he gets when someone is watching him. It’s like a miniature version of his Spidey-Sense, sans the terror.
He turns around. The centrifuge is mid-cycle, which might explain why Bruce is staring at him. Bruce awkwardly attempts to cover this fact up by swivelling his stool the other direction, and then sighs, realizing he’s caught. He swivels back, but doesn’t say anything for a moment, pressing his lips together like he wants to hold the words in until he’s sure of them.
Peter raises an eyebrow.
“You look like you’re getting ready to ask me to prom, Dr. Banner,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered, but maybe pick a more romantic setting next time.”
Bruce blows out a puff of air.
“Jeez, Tony really is rubbing off on you.” He shakes his head. “Okay, I know I apologized for the kid stuff earlier, and I’ll do it again in a second, but shouldn’t we maybe tell your aunt you’re here? I feel a little weird about your… you know… minor status. Non-consensual medical services and all that jazz.”
“It’s consensual. I’m consenting, look. Don’t make it weird, Dr. Banner.”
“I think we just passed weird.” Bruce rubs the back of his neck. “Peter…”
Peter sighs, twiddling his pencil between his fingers and avoiding Bruce’s eye.
“My aunt puts up with a lot from me,” he says. “After, um, after Thanos and all that… and she’s already trying really hard to still be cool with all the Spider-Man stuff… I just, I don’t want to worry her unless I have to.”
It’s Bruce’s turn to sigh. He chews the inside of his cheek as he does it, but nods nonetheless.
“Well, lucky for you, I’m not an actual medical doctor,” he says. “So I think we’ll get a pass on this very shaky ethical decision for today.”
“Wait, you’re not a medical doctor? Don’t you have, like, nineteen PhDs?”
“Seven,” Bruce corrects. Seeing the skepticism on Peter’s face, his jaw drops. “Come on! That’s impressive! That’s more than you, you eleventh grade delinquent. That’s more than Tony! It’s a crazy amount of PhDs.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a real doctor if you don’t have a medical degree. You’re a total hack, dude.”
Bruce laughs. Peter laughs too. It’s a nice break from the tension, until the centrifuge dings. Then Peter’s smile sloughs off as he watches Bruce transfer his blood to a slide and slip it under a microscope.
“Let’s see what we have here,” he says, pressing his face to the eyepiece.
And then he doesn’t say anything at all for a while. For so long, in fact, that Peter has to be the one to break the silence.
“Um… Dr. Banner? Is it anemia, or something?”
“It’s, uh.” Bruce pulls away from the eyepiece at last, rubs his eyes a few times, and returns to it. “Uh,” he says again.
“You’re starting to freak me out, man.”
“Sorry Pete I just… I haven’t seen anything like this before.”
“Like what?”
Bruce gives him a fleeting look, like he’s assessing Peter’s fortitude, and then presses a button to project the image from the microscope onto the screen on the wall.
The image is too zoomed-in for the blood to look anything like blood. Bruce is looking at it on a much more microscopic level, and the image is swimming with what looks like little flecks of black sand, except the flecks are sharp-looking and weirdly iridescent.
“Woah,” says Peter, hopping off his chair. “Is that—?”
“I think it’s a virus,” says Bruce, standing up to join Peter in his close examination of the weird flecks. They’re moving, crawling across the surface of his hugely-magnified blood cells. The movement makes them look sinister, and Peter shudders. “It’s acting like a virus,” Bruce goes on, pointing. “Look, it’s attacking your red blood cells.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Messing with your clotting factor, I think.” Bruce zooms in even further, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Which would explain the bruises. And then some. The concentration of these things in your bloodstream is insane. They’re definitely causing anemia, low blood pressure… it’s no wonder you passed out.”
Peter swallows. “Okay,” he says, “okay, so why isn’t my healing factor getting rid of it, then? I haven’t even had a cold in over a year, what’s different about this?”
“I don’t… Pete, I don’t think this is terrestrial.”
Peter draws back from his examination of his own blood to give Bruce a startled look.
“I have an alien virus? That’s… I can’t even decide if that’s cool or terrifying. Wait, if I got this in space then why isn’t anyone else sick? Tony’s okay, right?”
His worry sharpens at the thought. What if that’s why Tony hasn’t been calling him?
But Bruce shakes his head. “He hasn’t said anything. Granted, Tony’s not always the most forthcoming, but… we’d know if he was sick,” he says.
“How do you know?”
Bruce hesitates.
“Because judging from the number of these suckers and the amount of bleeding they’re causing, your healing factor is about the only reason you’re even standing right now. If you weren’t enhanced…”
The rest of the thought goes unspoken, but the silence feels sharper than the sentence it implies.
Peter feels woozy again. He doesn’t want to admit this, so he slowly lowers himself onto the stool Bruce has just vacated.
“It must have been on Titan,” he mumbles. “I was alone on Titan.”
“I thought Dr. Strange was with you.”
“Just his astral projection.”
“Oh. Right. Of course. Astral… astral projection. That makes sense.”
There is another excruciating silence. Tentatively, Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Pete, are you—?”
But Peter can’t stand that. He can’t stand being the object of pity; he can’t stand being seen as weak. It’s not just that he can’t stand it; it’s just not possible , not after Thanos. He gets to his feet, ignoring the way his head swims when he does.
“Okay,” he says, “okay, alien virus. That’s just tiny aliens, right? Well, we’ve all fought real, life-size aliens, haven’t we? How bad can this be after that? So what do we do, Dr. Banner?”
Bruce’s face is all screwed up, like he can’t think what to say. Like he’s holding back some emotion that Peter very much does not want to see.
“I’m just guessing here, Pete, I mean, I’ll have to do some more tests, but… Just, judging from how rapidly they’re multiplying and the timeline of the bruises, I think whatever this thing is probably has a cumulative effect. It’s obviously wearing down your defenses, even your healing factor isn’t going to be able to keep up forever.”
“So what do we do? ”
“I don’t know.”
It’s not the answer Peter was hoping for.
“Shit,” he says.
This time, he sinks onto the stool involuntarily. Bruce crouches down in front of him swiftly, this time gripping him by both shoulders.
“Pete,” he says, “Pete, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean I don’t know what to do yet. I’m obviously going to do everything I can, okay? This is… it’s not good, but your healing is doing you some major favors, okay? We’ve got some time. We’ll figure this out.”
Peter nods, but he doesn’t say anything, because he’s still battling an overwhelming wave of lightheadedness.
Bruce reaches behind him and turns off the projection.
“Peter,” he says, his voice firmer than it has been all afternoon. “We need to tell the others about this.”
This gets Peter talking.
“No. No way.”
“Peter, they might have ideas I don’t, this is the type of thing that needs all hands on deck.”
“Dr. Banner, no! They already think of me as a little kid. You do too, you said it yourself! What are they going to say if they know I’m making a fuss about a—a cold? How are they going to trust me to fight alongside them? They already have their doubts after what happened with Thanos, you know they do.”
“This isn’t a cold, Pete.”
“An alien cold, then. Please, Dr. Banner, can’t we try to figure it out on our own first?”
“We should at least tell Tony.”
Peter blanches. A memory fills his head, a memory of Tony, pale and trembling and covered in dirt and blood, holding his hand while he apologized over and over, I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. I’m sorry. And then another—Tony’s face when he realized that Dr. Strange had used the Time Stone successfully, that Peter was still alive. The relief. The regret.
“Dr. Strange,” Peter says.
Bruce’s eyebrows fly up.
“We’ll talk to Dr. Strange,” Peter says, more firmly. “He’ll know what to do. And if… if he doesn’t… then maybe we can tell Tony.”
Bruce looks like he’s going to object. He squints at Peter with so much doubt Peter almost backs down. But he doesn’t. He sets his jaw and meets Bruce’s gaze, and after a minute Bruce drops his eyes.
“Dr. Strange it is,” he says.