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Peter knew he is strong.
Ever since the spider bite, everything about him changed. He no longer needed his glasses, his asthma was a thing of the past, he has freaking abs, and he shot up two whole inches in height over the course of a week. All his senses had increased but it was hearing and vision that were off the charts with how much they increased. There were colors he couldn’t see before and he could hear the neighbors three floors down arguing about how the girlfriend caught the boyfriend cheating.
But the biggest thing was how strong he had become.
He used to be a scrawny kid that could barely carry two bags of groceries up the stairwell because the lazy landlord refused to fix the elevator before he got winded. He was the kid that needed help opening jars of sauce to go with their pasta that Uncle Ben would make because neither of them trusted Aunt May to not burn down the kitchen.
But now?
Peter is strong.
Very strong.
Incredibly strong.
He is high up on the list of one of the strongest people on the planet.
And that had to mean something when the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Thor were on it.
But Peter didn’t know what it meant to be as strong as he was until the day he had to prove it.
“Pete, you with me?” Tony Stark snapped in front of Peter’s face to get his attention. Peter snapped to attention, looking sheepishly at his mentor.
“Sorry, Mr. Stark,” Peter apologized, his hands moving again as he worked on the project Tony had given him to complete.
“Kid, please, I’m begging you, Tony,” Tony sighed.
“Okay, Mr. Stark,” Peter smirked, avoiding the light swipe from Tony.
“I hope you know that you are a little shit,” Tony narrowed his eyes.
“Aunt May had mentioned it once or twice,” Peter laughed, pushing his desk chair back and spinning on it.
“If anyone would know, it would be Aunt Hottie.”
“Please don’t call her that,” Peter grimaced. “It’s bad enough that Mr. Delmar is always asking about her.”
“She’s hot and single,” Tony shrugged. “She’s bound to get some attention.” Tony shook his head, clearing the thought as he came back to the original one. “Enough of that, you okay, kid?”
“I think?” Peter said in an uncertain tone. He reached up to scratch at his neck, trying to ease at the uncomfortable feeling that had been bothering him all day.
Tony narrowed his eyes at Peter, looking his over. “Are you hiding an injury again?”
“No!” Peter shook his head rapidly with his hands waving in the air. “I swear I haven’t hidden an injury again since that time you got all mad about me getting that cut.”
“You were stabbed!”
“Eh, same difference.”
“This kid,” Tony muttered to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, if you aren’t hurt, then how come you’re all fidgety?”
“Honestly,” Peter sighed, looking over at Tony, “something feels wrong. My senses have been acting up all day.”
“Is it your Peter-tingle?” Tony asked with a raise of his eyebrow.
“I told you guys, we aren’t calling it that,” Peter groaned dramatically. “If we are going to name it, call it my Spidey-sense or something like that.”
“I like Peter-tingle better,” Tony smirked.
“And this is the reason you are my second favorite avenger,” Peter pointed at Tony with a straight face.
“Se—second?” Tony sputtered. “I am your mentor and I made you a hella expensive suit.”
“Yes,” Peter nodded along. “But you don’t have cool lightning powers like Thor.”
“You can barely say a sentence around him!”
“And now you know why.”
“That’s it, I’m writing you out of the will,” Tony declared dramatically. “Friday, be a dear and do that for me.”
“Nooooo,” Peter said with a dramatic flair that matched Tony’s, giggling all the way.
“No can do, boss,” Friday’s voice answered.
“Excuse me?” Tony gaped.
“Based on Mrs. Stark’s directive, you cannot keep threatening to take little Boss off whenever he annoys you,” Friday answered. Peter wheezed from his chair, trying to hold in his laughter especially when Tony sent him the stink eye.
“All of you, traitors,” Tony rolled his eyes.
“We love you, Mr. Stark,” Peter laughed, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Whatever you say, you little rugrat,” Tony rolled his eyes but Peter could see the pull of his lips into a smile.
Peter went back to his work, trying to figure out the fault in the old StarkPhone Tony had given him. It was a test of his problem-solving skills to see if it was a mechanical or software issue. The work was relaxing, letting himself be embraced by the thought process.
But at the back of his mind, something was still buzzing at him. It said something was wrong, something that he would have to fix.
But he still had no clue what it was.
“Why is it always robots?”
“Would you rather it be aliens again?”
“…I’ll take the robots.”
Peter snickered, listening to Tony’s and Natasha’s words over the comms. It was an all-hands-on deck situation in the city as a hoard of robots were released by a disgruntled tech genius. The arachnid themed hero tuned out most of the villain’s monologue, not really caring as he swung in and grabbed the people on the streets out of the way from being killed.
Peter was on civilian-duty as his fast movements getting in-and-out of places were the best at saving the people from falling rubble or robots. So far, he had saved twenty-six people of all ages and three dogs. In between, he would land a punch on any close flying robots to put them out of commission. The great thing about fighting robots was that he didn’t need to hold his strength back as much as when he fought flesh and blood beings.
Spider-Man has a strict no killing policy when possible. So far, he has not had to break his self-imposed rule and he fears the day he will have to. Sometimes, he lays in bed at night in anxiety as he thinks what will finally be the push that makes take someone’s life. What will be the snapping of the line between hero and villain.
“Help!”
Peter looked around from his swing to find where that scream came from. It sounded like it came from inside a building but he couldn’t tell which one.
A loud explosion to his right told him which building it was.
“What was that?!” Tony yelled through the comms.
“Building explosion near me,” Peter answered. He dove into the rising dust cloud, letting Karen initiate the breathing mask protocol of his mask. The lens of his mask shifted into thermal reading mode and his heart sunk when he saw the amount of people stuck in the breaking building. “Going in.”
“Peter, no!”
Peter ignored the comms as he rushed in, feet landing on rumbling flooring. He ran back and forth from the unstable end to grab any many people as he could to deposit them on the side that seemed to be fine. People on the safe side would take the rescued civilians from his hold as he got close to he could run back in to grab more.
A loud cracking noise made Peter’s blood ran cold.
The unstable side of the building shifted away, starting to fall away. Everyone on the falling half stumbled, their footing lost as they screamed.
“No!” Peter yelled, diving into the opening gap. Using his webs, he swung himself higher in the air to shoot higher in the air. Rapidly pressing his web shooters, lines of webs were sent out to grab at important points of the structure. Karen had taken the liberty of highlighting them to make things easier for Peter but it was still a rush grabbing them all.
In a move that felt shockingly similar to the ferry incident, Peter rushed around to secure webs from the falling away piece to the intact half of the building.
But it wasn’t fast enough.
There wasn’t enough webs he could make and they weren’t strong enough to keep the building up on their own in time for the rest of the civilians to get out. So, Peter did the next best thing.
He used himself.
Throwing out web after web until he had enough points of contact on each side, Peter fell to the middle of the two sides of the building and held on for dear life. He screamed as his body was jerked from both sides, his grip slipping on his right hand. Twisting his right hand, Peter wrapped the webs around his wrist three times to make sure he wouldn’t lose that grip again.
“Peter, what are you doing?!” Tony screamed.
“My job,” Peter answered, pulling the falling half of the building closer and adjusting his grip.
“Friday, get me a view from whatever idiot is deciding to record this.” Peter heard over the mic as Tony commanded his A.I. There was two seconds of silence before Tony let out a loud curse. “Kid, stop that! You’re going to kill yourself!”
“No, I’m not,” Peter said, his voice hard as he concentrated. “Gotta save them.”
“Peter, you gotta let go,” Tony begged.
“Can’t,” Peter grunted. His muscles screamed at him, begging for him to release the two heavy slabs he was holding together. “People. Here. Still.” Clipped words were the only thing Peter could get out, the strain pulling on his entire body.
“You’re going to rip yourself in half!”
“We can’t always save everyone no matter how much we try,” Cap’s soft voice tried to console him.
“I. Will.” Peter growled. He let out a yell as he braced his arms and pulled. The two halves over the building were pulled closer, the people on the falling half scrambling to make the jump to the still standing side. The civilians who were safe reached their hands out to help the others, pulling them the rest of the way.
“Hold on just a bit longer, Spidey!” someone called out.
“We’re almost done getting them all out!” someone else yelled out.
“Don’t give up!” a third person screamed.
Shouts of encouragement rang out around Peter in that half-destroyed building. The citizens were screaming for him to keep pushing, to not give up on them. Perhaps it was their words that helped Peter keep his strength, as a way to not let them down.
“You. Hear. That?” Peter panted, his shoulders feeling like liquid fire. “Can’t. Give. Up.”
“Dammit, kid,” Tony cursed. “Hold on, we are three and a half minutes out.”
“Heh. Nice. Pun.”
Peter tuned out everything as he focused on keeping the one half of the building from breaking away completely with people still in it. He could only hope that the street had cleared out so when it fell, there would be no casualties. Hopefully all the first responders had set up a barricade.
“Almost done, Spidey!” one of the civilians called out to him.
Peter’s arms shook with a vengeance and he had no clue how he was able to keep his hold for so long. There was a part of him that questioned if his strength had increased as he matured. He remembered the time with the ferry where he was in this exact same pose but he could barely keep it together then. How was he able to keep two halves of a building that were so much heavier than a boat together with such success?
He had absolutely no clue.
Maybe it was the adrenaline.
Maybe it was the need to save others.
Maybe it was because of what Uncle Ben said.
‘With great power, comes great responsibility.’
Yeah, he has great power.
So, he needs to make sure he uses to save every single person possible.
“One minute, Peter!” Tony’s voice echoed in his ear.
“We’re done!” one of the civilians called out. “Everyone is out!”
It was like a flick of a switch with those words. The strength in Peter’s hands left him, relaxing his grip. The broken half of the building immediately tipped away, pivoting on the small piece of construction that kept it upright the entire time with Peter’s help. He watched as it leaned away from him as he fell down, only caught from plummeting by the lines of webs wrapped around his wrist. His body jerked as the line became taught and a pain filled whine escaped his throat as it pulled on the abused muscles.
Peter swayed in the air there, no strength left in him to pull himself up. He was resigned to hang there in his wavering state of consciousness when he felt a tug on his webs. Slowly but surely, he felt something pulling him up from where he dangled.
Peering up, he could see the civilians that he saved pulling on the webs like they were playing tug-of-war. They stood in a line, shouting at each to pull to get their hero up.
Peter’s head fell back down, looking down at the ground where long pieces of twisted sharp rebar pointed up at him. He gave a soft shudder as he imagined what would have happened if he didn’t think to wrap the webs around his wrist earlier.
The lines of webs must have been shorter than Peter thought because it was almost instantly that he was being lifted up over the edge of broken flooring and laid out on the ground. His arms flopped out against his sides and a soft groan escaped his lips.
“Spidey?” a lady questioned, stepping closer. “Are you okay?”
“Never…better,” Peter wheezed as he tried to take in deep breathes of fresh air, his body entirely spent. “But…please don’t…ask me…to do that…again.”
The lady gave a soft chuckle, the others around them rolling their eyes at the small joke that wasn’t really a joke. The sound of blasters came closer, making the civilians look up through the smoke and dust that was now billowing into the air from the fallen half of the building. Peter just let his eyes close, taking a well-deserved break.
“Spider-man?” Tony asked in a panicked voice, landing at Peter’s side. His metal covered hands hovered in the air above Peter’s body, unsure on what to do.
“Still alive,” Peter croaked. “Want a nap.” There was a full body sigh as Tony’s body lost some of its tension. Peter snickered softly to himself before he winced at the pain in his arms. “Give me moment. I can help with evacuations.”
“Yeah, no,” Tony deadpanned. “You are in no shape to do anything but take a nice trip to the med bay.”
“Noooo,” Peter groaned. “Gotta help.”
“Spidey, you’ve helped plenty,” one of the civilians interjected. His voice told Peter he was one of the ones that gave him encouragement throughout the whole ordeal and told him when the final person was safe. “You gotta go home and get yourself looked at. That Hercules hold looked killer. We can wait until others come to get us.”
“You hear that, ‘roos?” Tony said and Peter could hear the smirk in it. “They are saying it’s time for little spiders to go home.”
“Rude,” Peter mumbled.
Tony reached down to pick up Peter, one metal covered arm under his knees and the other against the Peter’s shoulders. One of Peter’s arms was draped over Tony’s shoulders but it hung there like a limp noodle.
“Thanks for pulling him up,” Tony nodded at the group of civilians around them.
“It was the least we could do to thank Spider-Man for holding on for so long,” the man from earlier smiled.
“All in a day’s work,” Peter mumbled from where his head leaned against the Iron Man suit’s chest. His body was slowly shutting down, no energy for anything but he was pulling on the last of his reserves to talk.
“Whatever you say,” the man chuckled. “Get him out of here, Iron Man. We got it from here.”
Tony nodded before activating his feet blasters. The two superheroes shot off in the sky and that was when Peter dragged his eyes down to look at the debris from the fallen half of the building. It was spread out in multiple piles on the road and the building across the street had lost a chunk of its mid-floors.
“You did good, kid,” Tony said, relief rolling off of him like waves. “I don’t think anyone could have done that for as long as you.”
“No way,” Peter shook his head. “Cap or Thor could have. Hulk, too.”
“I think you’re wrong, ‘roo.” Peter hummed a response, the edges of his vision fading to darkness. “Kid, you with me?”
There was a slight shake to Peter’s shoulders, like Tony was trying to get a response from the spider themed hero. Unfortunately for him, the last of Peter’s energy finally ran out and he succumbed to blissful sleep.
“Oooowwwww,” Peter groaned, his voice muffled by the pillow he was face down on.
“That’s what happens when you hold together two halves of a multi-story building for entire five minutes,” Natasha hummed from her seat in the living room. She filed her nails, inspecting them before she gave them a new coat of polish.
“No regrets,” was Peter’s response.
“Did you see the picture one of the civilians took?” Wanda asked, scrolling on her phone.
“Let me see.” Peter lifted his head up to see Wanda pointing her phone screen at him, showing an image of his superhero self dangling in the air. His muscles were taut and you could see how much he was flexing to keep a hold of the multitude of web strands that held the falling half of the building up. The eye lens of his mask were narrowed, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Wicked. That’s probably the picture Ned has been spamming me about.”
“The internet says you set a new record for the Hercules hold,” Wanda hummed, turning her phone back towards herself.
“Not by choice,” Peter mumbled.
“There’s a video, too,” Clint commented, his head hanging off the edge of the chair he was upside down in. He was watching an episode of Hell’s Kitchen, laughing at when Gordon Ramsey would get upset. “It’s literally insane watching you keep a hold of that for so long.”
“He doesn’t need to see it,” Tony sighed, laying a new pack of ice across Peter’s shoulders. “He already lived through it.”
“10/10, would not recommend,” Peter said, a sigh escaping him when the coolness of the ice sunk into his strained muscles. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.” Doctor Cho had said that Peter was going to be okay, just a lot of soreness in his arms, shoulders, and chest. He had been given a bottle of Cap’s special extra-extra strength pain pills and an order of lots of icing for the next few days. His healing would take care of everything for the most part but it wouldn’t hurt to help it out.
“I have to say, son, you did a great job,” Steve reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. He pulled his hand away with an apology when Peter winced and Tony sent him a stink eye. “I don’t think I could have held on for as long as you could.”
“You’re just being polite,” Peter mumbled, turning his head so he wasn’t speaking into the couch cushion anymore.
“I’m not,” Steve shook his head. “One time I tried to stop a helicopter from flying away by holding it and the landing pad and I could barely keep it there for a minute.”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” Peter rolled his eyes. “It’s a helicopter actively trying to flying away.”
“And a concrete building trying to fall isn’t just like that?” Wanda snorted.
“You’re not helping,” Peter groaned.
“Not trying to,” Wanda answered with a giggle, her thumb swiping on her phone.
“Learn to take a compliment, kid.” Tony reached down to ruffle Peter’s curls, one of the few places someone could touch and not cause the boy pain.
Peter turned his head back into the cushion, hiding his blushing face at the praise he was getting. “Aww, you embarrassed him,” Natasha cooed.
“Stoooooop,” Peter groaned.
“We’re just proud of you, Pete,” Clint spoke up. “You saved a lot of people even after almost everyone gave up on them.”
“I can’t give up on people,” Peter mumbled, turning his face again to speak to the group. “I have to use my powers to help them or else what is the point of having them.”
“You’re too good for this world,” Steve smiled, standing up from his chair to head into the kitchen.
Peter could hear Tony step away to follow Steve and he closed his eyes. He was content just vegging out on the couch and enjoying the feeling of the ice on his shoulders and arms. The recent dose of the pain pills were starting to take effect and with that, they were trying to pull him back down into sleep. Over the noise of the tv, Wanda tapping on her phone, Natasha filing her nails and the coffee maker, Peter could hear Tony and Steve conversing quietly.
“He’s going to be the best of us, one day,” Steve whispered to Tony, pulling a mug out of the cabinet.
“What are you talking about, Capsicle?” Tony huffed. “He already is.”
Peter let those words warm his heart as he drifted farther into slumberland. The peaceful din of everyone just existing peaceful without a threat to their lives lured him in a cocoon of safeness. There was a part of him that barely holding on by the tips of his fingers.
The events of that day scratched at his head. He never knew how truly strong he was until he had to prove it for the sake of the people stuck in that crumbling building. He wondered if his Uncle Ben was watching from wherever he was seeing that Peter was taking his words to heart.
Calloused finger tips reached down to scratch at Peter’s scalp. “Go to sleep, kid,” Tony mumbled. “You deserve it.”
And that was the final push for Peter to let himself fall asleep.
His final thought before he fell asleep was that his Spider-sense was quiet.