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It wasn't supposed to go like this. It wasn't. Peter wasn't even on patrol, and Harley had only tagged along with him to the corner store on a last-minute whim. The robbery at the bank across the street had come out of nowhere, and of course - of course - Harley had shoved him away to don his mask and go save the day. Peter had kept things under control until the cops got there, had kept the hostages shielded from potential bullets, had done everything right.
Almost everything.
Because now Peter was on his knees in a back alley with his hands pressed firmly to the bullet wound in Harley's chest, the one stray shot that got away in the chaos.
Of fucking course.
"P...Pete–"
"Don't," Peter said hoarsely, shaking his head, refusing to listen. "You'll - y-you'll be fine. I'll call Dad again. O-Okay? He'll answer. He will. You'll - you're gonna be okay. You'll be okay."
"Peter..." Harley coughed, the sound coming out wetter than it had any right to be. He was shivering, his eyes hazy, and his Adam's apple bobbed with the swallow he managed. "I'm n-not...not–"
"Karen," Peter muttered, frantic. "Status. Please. Please tell me he's gonna be okay."
" ...unless he gets medical attention in the next few minutes, the outcome doesn't look favorable, Peter. ”
"Shit. Shit! " There had to be a way. There had to be. Tony wasn't answering, he wouldn't get here in time, there was no way he would. But....but there had to be an ambulance nearby, right? There were emergency units on their way to the bank. There hadn't been a medic on hand yet when Peter had found Harley, but - but maybe by now–
"H-Hey..." Harley gripped at Peter's arm weakly, his breathing labored and rattling and wrong. Red smeared against red, a dark stripe against the material of Peter's suit. Despite it all, despite Peter's shining eyes and Harley's obvious pain, Harley managed a weak grin and a chuckle. "We...we c-can't all have s...super healing. Right? Heh..."
Something sparked in the back of Peter's mind, the beginnings of an idea, the seeds of inspiration.
Super healing. Super healing.
Maybe it was insane. Maybe it was crazy. Maybe - maybe it wouldn't even work, but he had to try, he had to–
"P...Peter? What–"
Harley was staring at him, confused, baffled as he watched his brother slap a palm to the front of his Spider-Man suit and let the baggy fabric fall away. He was keeping one palm on Harley's injury all the while, but the other was scrambling, shaking off a sleeve, pulling at red and blue materiel to get it out of the way. He caught the finger of one glove-ended sleeve between his teeth, yanking his hand free and already letting his reach skitter across the alley, searching blindly. Shaking fingers closed around the strap of Harley's bag and tugged it close to dig through it, already knowing what he was looking for–
"Pete...h-hey, hey – whad're you doin'?"
Harley's words were becoming sluggish, slow, his tongue sounding heavy in his mouth, and Peter clenched his jaw tight.
"Harley, just - just put pressure on that, o-okay?" he insisted, quiet and rushed, rearranging both of Harley's hands to press on the bullet wound for however long it would take him to do what he needed to do. "Okay? Can you do that?"
"Yeah, I–"
Not wasting a second, Peter flipped open Harley's pocketknife and clutched it in his gloved hand, taking a breath and pressing the pointed tip to his uncovered palm. Anxiety pulsed through him for a heartbeat, making him hesitate, making him pause, and in that brief moment he saw Harley's eyes widen in front of him. Now or never. Ignoring the sharp sting of a freshly opened wound, Peter sliced a shallow cut across his palm and yanked Harley's hands away from his injury, pressing his bleeding hand to his brother's open wound. Recognition dawned on Harley's face, delayed and slow but there. Peter spotted it the second it reached Harley's eyes and he felt his brother's breath catch beneath his hand.
"...Peter?" Harley asked, his voice low and hoarse and beginning to fill with a baffled sort of dread. "What th' hell did you just do ?"
"You said not everyone had super healing," Peter told him, as if nothing else made sense but this. "But I've got it running through my veins." He smiled, a shaky and lopsided sort of thing. He shrugged. "Oops."
Harley blinked at him, eyes wide and incredulous and horrified and awed, and all the while his jaw hung open as though he wanted to speak but couldn't find the words. His breath was still coming in shuddering, choked gasps, but he didn't look so pale, didn't look so out of it. When he finally gained some semblance of motion again, it was to raise his fist and punch his brother in the shoulder, weak though the motion may have been.
"Are you fuckin' insane?!" Harley hissed, and Peter had the decency to look slightly abashed. From where he was still sitting slouched against the wall of the alley, Harley went to sit up and berate his brother properly, but the pain in his chest made him cry out and suck in a sharp breath. He knocked his head back against the bricks in frustration and his reddened hands scrabbled against Peter's upper arms for stability. "Sh- Shit. You - y-you can't jus'...didj'you ev'n... Pete- "
"Stop trying to talk," Peter insisted, his free hand clutching at Harley's shoulder to keep him still while he kept his bleeding palm right where he'd left it, praying that his hair-brained plan would actually work. "And yes, I did think this through. Sort of. Mostly."
"Mostly?! "
"Shut up! " Peter squeezed Harley's shoulder, worry piercing him at the way Harley fell into a pained, wet coughing fit. "Sit still. Okay? This - it's gonna work. We've got the same blood type. Remember? A-And...and remember a few years ago? Before I got my powers, before all this - back when we got kidnapped? Remember that? You needed a - a transfusion, right? A-A-And....and I was a match, and so - so I was your donor. Remember?" Between the thick, wheezing breaths Harley's coughing had faded to, Peter spotted that hint of recognition in his brother's eyes. A watery smile pulled at his lips. "We more than match. We - we made jokes about being blood brothers. We match. Okay? This - this'll work. You'll be fine. You will . Okay? Okay?? "
"Peter, you have a call from Tony."
Tony. Fumbling with the earpiece he had put in after he had removed his mask, Peter was quick to answer, a stammered "Dad?" already on his lips...but Tony beat him to the punch.
"Pete? What happened? I have a dozen missed calls from Karen-"
"I-It's Harley," Peter blurted out, barely catching the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. His words came out faster than he could think them. "We were just going out to grab snacks, but there was a robbery across the street, and I stopped it, and nobody else got hurt, but - but Harley got shot, and we're in a back alley, and he wasn't gonna make it - Karen said he wasn't gonna make it, and I had to do something-"
"Peter. Breathe. Take a breath. I'm already tracking your location."
Peter was sure he'd muttered out some kind of thanks, some kind of plea, but he couldn't really remember. At some point his eyes had slammed shut and he was forcing himself to breathe slower at Tony's request while the world felt like it was spinning around him. He was only barely aware of the feel of tacky fingers grabbing at his face to pluck the earpiece away from him.
"Hey, Pops." Harley.
"Hey, Spud. Pete says you got shot?"
Peter could hear Tony's words despite Harley being the one using the earpiece, his hearing more than making up for the small distance between himself and the tiny speaker. He pried his eyes open and saw Harley wince and let his head rest back against the bricks again.
"Heh...yeah. I did. Feel like Swiss cheese. Jus' dumb luck...not his fault." His sentences were short and his words were slightly pained, but even so Peter felt warm bubble up amidst his fear and worry at the fact that, even now, even bleeding out in a back alley somewhere, Harley was making an effort to make sure Tony didn't chew Peter out for something he had no control over.
"Swiss-" Tony huffed, a strained sort of half-laugh coming over the speaker. Peter could hear repulsors, faint though they were. "You should've let Peter handle it. He has a suit. You don't."
"I did let him handle it," Harley mumbled. "I was a...across th' goddamn street. Lucky it was - was me an' not some other- shit! "
"Sorry, sorry!" Peter hissed in sympathy. He had felt the cut on his palm knitting itself back together, and without thinking he had taken his hand away from Harley's injury to take a closer look. Beneath Harley's sharp breaths and hissed curses, Peter made quick work of reopening his own wound and pressing his palm, again, to the point where Harley had been shot. Harley's second pained noise was quieter, muffled behind his own fist. Peter supposed knowing it was coming helped a bit.
"I'm two minutes out. What's happening?"
"Sorry, that was my fault!" Peter told him unnecessarily. "I - we've gotta keep pressure on the...on the wound. Right? And I just-"
"It jus' hurts like a fucking bitch," Harley spat, glaring at Peter was very little heat behind it. "Warn me next time, nerd."
"Hick."
"Boys," Tony bit out sharply. "Cut it out. Harley, save your breath. Okay? A minute and a half. Can you wait that long?"
Harley and Peter locked eyes in the shadows of the alleyway, hope and relief more than evident in both of their expression. A minute and a half. A minute and a half and Tony would be there. For the first time since he had set Harley down away from prying eyes and windows, Peter actually believed the hope for rescue that he had been clinging to from the start.
"Karen?" Peter asked instead. "Status?"
"Harley needs immediate medical attention, but his likelihood of survival is higher than the last time you asked me."
Seeing as Harley was the one with the earpiece, they both heard it, and both brothers let out near-identical sighs of relief. Peter's hand still clutching at Harley's shoulder tightened ever-so-slightly and they exchanged exhausted, pained smiles.
"Yeah," Peter told Tony. "Minute and a half. We can do that."
By the time Tony's repulsors came into hearing range, Peter and Harley had barely moved. Peter was crouched beside his brother now instead of in front of him and keeping pressure on Harley's injury all the while. Harley, to his credit, was handling the pain like a pro, though a light sheen of sweat had broken out across his brow and his eyes had gone slightly glassy. Fragments of déjà vu prickled at the edge of Peter's awareness and he tried to ignore the worry crawling up his spine. Twice already in the last minute he found himself scratching at the back of his neck with the hand still encased in his suit sleeve, at a point just below his hairline that had once sported the bite from a certain genetically-enhanced arachnid.
He remembered how horribly sick he had become back then.
He only hoped that knowing what was actually happening would help Harley through the very same experience now.
Harley was the first to look up when Tony descended into the dark hiding place Peter had chosen even though Peter had heard him coming from a few blocks away. Metal met asphalt and Peter finally pulled his eyes away from Harley.
"Hey Dad," he managed. He tried to smile but it came out as more of a grimace.
In seconds the Iron Man suit had opened and Tony stepped out, crossing the few steps that carried him to his kids and dropping to a knee. He had clearly been working in the lab when he got Peter's message. Between the oil-stained jeans and well-worn band t-shirt, whatever grime he was picking up from the alley probably wouldn't make much of a difference.
(Peter knew from experience that Tony probably wouldn't have cared about stains even if he was wearing an Armani suit. When it came to Peter and Harley, nothing else tended to matter to Tony Stark but their wellbeing.)
"Hey kiddo," Tony returned. He glanced between them, his lips thinning at the sight of Harley. He reached out with one hand to run his fingers through Harley's hair then cup his face, his thumb running over the teen's cheek. "Christ. You two always manage to get into the worst messes, don't you?"
"N-Nice to...to see you too, old man," Harley mumbled. When he blinked it was slow and sluggish, his eyes glassy and feverish, but his smirk was as genuine as ever. The effect was ruined only slightly by the way he leaned into his dad's comforting hand on his cheek. "Took your sweet-ass time, huh?"
"Don't start," Tony scolded, but there was no sharpness to his words. He took a breath. "Alright. Pete-" He did a double-take. "-why the hell are you half-naked?"
Shit. Peter gulped and exchanged a look with Harley. But apparently Tony didn't deem it worth much more than that single passing question because he shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Okay. Not the time. Peter, kiddo, I'm gonna need you to move your hand. Okay?"
"Wait, but-"
"I know," Tony cut him off. "I know. Pressure. I get it. But we need to get him back to the tower, so I'm gonna have you web over the wound just for the trip back. Can you do that for me?"
Shit. Shit. His hand - the blood. How was he going to explain? How could he possibly explain - but he had to do it, didn't he? Peter's eyes were wide with worry and anxiety but he nodded all the same. Webbing. He could do that. He needed to do that. He had to.
But apparently, in warring with himself over how he would explain to his father exactly what he had done to save his brother's life, he had been quiet for too long. He felt Tony's fingers around his wrist and felt his hand being pried away from Harley's chest. Panic made his eyes fly wide.
"W-Wait, don't-"
Tony froze, his eyes flitting from Peter's cut palm to Harley's gunshot wound to the sweat beading at Harley's brow before locking, wide and sharp and searching, on Peter's startled face.
"...Peter," he said slowly, as though forcing himself to remain calm. "Peter, what is this?"
"I-I...I just-" Peter stammered, ducking his head and unable to meet his dad's eyes. "I - Harley was - Karen said he wouldn't make it, and I had to do something , and then - and then Harley said something about super healing, and it...well it got me thinking, and I didn't have much time -"
"Oh my god..." Peter glanced up long enough to see the pale, stricken look on Tony's face, to see the way Tony stared pointedly at the slowly-healing cut on Peter's palm with dawning, horrified understanding. "You said that. On the phone, you said you had to do something . This is what you meant? This was your idea?"
"I..." Peter shrank in on himself, flinching when Tony's eyes locked on his face instead of his hand. Where he was still gripping Peter's wrist, Tony shook his arm slightly.
"This was your plan?" he demanded, and though his words were hissed out in a low and furious tone, Peter could hear the fear beneath it. "You - you couldn't get ahold of me, so you thought you'd run your own back alley genetic experiment? Peter, what the hell were you thinking?! What did you do? "
"I...I didn't - there wasn't time -" Peter's weak defense was feeble in the tense air of the alleyway. He tugged halfheartedly against Tony's grip on his wrist. When Tony finally let go Peter clutched his arm close to his chest. He was shaking, shivering, though he was sure it was less from the chill of the shadowed alley and more from adrenaline and fear.
"Lay off," Harley cut in. His voice was weak but no less protective than usual. "He saved me. Save your...your fffreakin' lecture for when we - ngh -" he winced, pressing his own hands to his injury, "-w-when we get...get home. O-Okay?"
For one brief, tension-filled moment, Peter wasn't sure what Tony would do. He avoided his father's gaze, his eyes lingering on his own sliced palm as he watched the skin slowly stitch back together into the beginnings of a scab.
"Pete," Tony said finally, the single word wavering, "web him up. Do that for me. Seal his wound, then get your suit back on and get back to tower."
Peter followed the commands on automatic, his aim slightly shaky but effective all the same. He was still shoving his arm through the sleeve of his Spider-Man suit when Tony carefully eased Harley up into his now-metal-covered arms.
"Peter?" Peter's head snapped up at his name, filtered as it was through the speakers of the Iron Man suit. "We have to talk about this."
Peter flinched.
"I-I know."
Tony and Harley were gone before Peter had even fetched his mask and Harley's bag from the ground.
Peter had been trailing after Tony and Harley ever since he got back to the tower. He was in clean street clothes now, a hoodie and some sweats fresh out of the dryer, but no matter how many times he scrubbed at his skin he felt like he couldn't quite get rid of the blood that had been on his hands since he pulled his wounded brother into his arms. He was antsy, jittery, waiting for news just outside of the med bay when Tony came out into the hall.
Tony looked exhausted, stressed beyond belief, his hair unruly and his eyes underlined by shadows. He was tugging a hand through his hair as the door swung shut behind him. When his eyes fell on Peter he didn't say a word. It was as though he expected nothing less than to find him waiting there. With a muscle ticking in his jaw, Tony nodded down the hall, silently beckoning Peter to follow. It wasn't until they were sequestered away in a spare office belonging to Dr. Banner, and until the door had clicked shut behind them, that Tony even opened his mouth.
"Harley's stable," he told Peter, who sank into the chair in front of the desk with a loud sigh of relief. "They've got him patched up and on morphine for the time being, but god knows how long that'll even work for him now. Hell, his temperature was already rising by the time they were done, and they thought I was insane for kicking out any medical staff who weren't Bruce and Helen."
Tony hadn't moved yet, his hands shoved into his jean pockets and his eyes trained on a point on the opposite wall. He was tense, his knee bouncing minutely. Peter could hear the way his heart was pounding quicker than average beneath his Styx shirt.
"You took a hell of a gamble, Peter," Tony told him, his focus snapping to his son alongside his words. "You know that, don't you? The risks involved in the choice you made–"
"I saved his life!" Peter heard himself blurt out, leaning forward in his seat with pleading eyes that begged Tony to understand. "He was going to die, there wasn't time , and I couldn't - I didn't have any other options-"
"I get that, I do," Tony cut him off, looking pained and pissed and terrified, "but we have no idea what your mutation might do to somebody else! We have no idea how you even survived in the first place! You were lucky when you got bitten, and back then I was so - so sure I was going to lose you–"
"Except we know how it'll affect Harley," Peter insisted, shoving to his feet beneath Tony's gaze. "We already know how it affected me, and Harley and I have the same blood type. And we had to do that transfusion, back before I got my powers–"
"That was ages ago, Peter!" Tony shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving Peter. "That was - you can't just assume–"
"–I know that! But–" Peter ran his hands through his hair, his curls standing on end and his words spilling from him with a rapid desperation laced through them. "–but whatever part of my DNA gave me my abilities...it...it'd still be in Harley's system too. It would . No, no, listen . I thought about this, okay? I - in the alley, I – s-see, 'cause white blood cells contain DNA, and that sticks around for over a year and a half when you get it from a donor. More, depending on - depending on how much is in your system, a-a-and there's - I mean there's always a risk with transfusions because even if you have the same blood type, there's always a possibility that the - that the body might reject the foreign blood. But when we did it with Harley, they said - I remember, they said it was a near- perfect match and we were lucky and - and Harley and I made jokes for weeks about being blood brothers, a-a-and he - if that's the case, and if I got bitten and I was okay, then Harley–"
"Peter!"
There were hands on his shoulders, wide and worried brown meeting his, darkness dancing at the corners of his vision. He could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, could hear his dad's heartbeat, could hear the buzz of electricity in the walls and footsteps down the hall and the distant beeping of a heart monitor and–
"Peter? Kiddo, breathe. Breathe for me. Okay? Close your eyes, take a breath. C'mon, Squirt."
–and Peter did as he was told, letting his head fall forward against Tony's chest and narrowing in on the sound of Tony's heartbeat, ignoring everything else in the room. The warm touch of a soothing hand rubbing against his back helped ground him, and once he was sure he wasn't about to pass out he took a slow, even breath.
"...I'm not an idiot," he mumbled against Tony's t-shirt, ignoring the dampness on his cheeks as he did so.
"I didn't say you were." Tony pulled back, and when he met Peter's gaze this time there was a tension around his eyes. "But - kid, it's not that simple. Genetic experimentation carries insane risks, human or not. I mean, look at what happened to Bruce."
"Dad–"
"You can't make insane calls like that, you can't. "
"Just – listen to me," Peter pleaded, and for the first time since stepping into the office something cracked in Tony's expression. Peter swallowed and pressed on, his words shaking. "I...Dad, I get it, you're scared. I am too. I was so so scared when I was sitting there watching him bleed out right in front of me–" He shook his head, his eyes distant, another alley and another gunshot and another person hovering at the back of his mind. He forced the old memory away. "It should have been me who was there, I could've taken that hit and been fine. But it's not fair. It's not–" He ran a hand through his hair again, pulling at it, tugging at already-mussed curls. He could feel tears running down his face but he couldn't remember when he started crying. All the same, when he sought out Tony's gaze again he didn't waver. "Stop talking to me like I'm some kid who doesn't know any better. I'm not stupid. I know what I did. It was either that or– or Harley–" he swallowed, the alternative not something he even had the strength to say aloud. His last words came out in a hoarse whisper. "I know what I did."
"Pete..." Tony let out a shuddering breath and wrapped his hand around Peter's wrist, gently tugging Peter's fingers away from his hair. He searched Peter's expression and Peter watched as a sort of pained understanding dawned in his father's eyes. Tony took another breath. Then, on some sort of final note, he drew Peter to his chest, hugging him close and cradling the back of his head with one hand. "Okay. Okay. " Peter heard him swallow. "You're right. You're absolutely right. I'm terrified. But - you were strong enough to make it through this. Maybe Harley will be too."