Chapter Text
“Hey, no sleeping!”
Peter groaned and lifted his head from where it lay on the cold desk. Mr. Harrington wasn’t even looking at him, his eyes were trained on the grocery-store romance paperback in his hand.
With a sigh, Peter sat up straight and rubbed a hand across his face. Between patrol running late the night before and a rough morning with Flash, this detention was turning into Hell.
He could still feel Flash’s eyes trained on him, the glare boring into the back of his head. It wasn’t even my fault, Peter thought bitterly, but it kind of was. He had been dozing off in second hour when Flash called him some name he couldn’t even remember by now, and his filter was evaporated by exhaustion. Without thinking he bit back, “Shut the fuck up, Flash,” and before he knew it, knuckles connected with his cheekbone. Three minutes and a lot of yelling later, Peter and Flash had their names written on the day’s detention list.
He shifted in his chair, trying not to watch the second hand slowly tick through its course on the clock. Instead, he thought about who he might save at patrol, the sandwich he would get from Mr. Delmar—payed for entirely in quarters—and which assignments were due when. It was as he wondered whether the small, round, colorful candies on Mr. Harrison’s desk were M&M’s or Skittles that the hairs on the back of his neck stood so sharply on end he thought that might fly off. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he could actually feel the blood moving through his veins.
Somebody was about to get hurt. Like, really hurt.
Peter shot up from his chair, wide eyed and pale. He wanted to run, but where would he go? What would he do?
Mr. Harrington sighed and turned a page, and Peter wondered how he could be so calm before he realized no one knew what would happen but him. “You’re not allowed to leave your seat—“
He didn’t finish his sentence before the door burst open and three large men burst in, their faces covered and their scarred fingers wrapped around handguns. Before Peter could so much as scream, the leading man brought the butt of his gun down on Mr. Harrison’s forehead, who crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.
”Holy shit!” Flash exclaimed, and for once, Peter agreed. The men turned to him and paused. The tallest whispered, “You didn’t say there’d be two!”
The one in the middle, shorter than the other two, replied, “I didn’t know there would be,” in a high voice, and Peter was almost shocked that this group was lead by a woman. He didn’t see much of that on patrol. “We’ll just take them both and raise the ransom.”
And then there were two guns trained on Flash and one on Peter. Ice flooded his veins as the woman and shorter man stalked towards Flash, leaving the taller to deal with him. All he could think was that everything was so different when he didn’t have the mask.
Flash threw his fist at the woman as soon as she was within arms reach. Of course, she grabbed it and used it to throw his body at the short man. He made quick work of duct taping Flash’s hands together as he struggled uselessly. “You can’t do this!” He cried. “My—my dad’s really powerful!”
”Yup,” the man grunted. “That’s kinda the point.” He shoved Flash, now bound tightly, back into the woman’s grasp, her gun trained on his temple. With the cold steel pressed against his skin, Flash finally had the good sense to go quiet.
The man approached Peter and turned him roughly, while the other kept his gun pressed to Peter’s forehead. Peter flinched as the duct tape wound around his wrists and forced himself to stay calm. He was Spider-Man, he could survive a little kidnapping. But then it hit him: he hadn’t planned on going out today. His suit was at home, neatly tucked in a drawer. And sure, he had his webshooters on him, safely concealed beneath the sleeves of his jacket, but he couldn’t use them without the mask. He wasn’t Spider-Man. Right now, he was asthmatic high school sophomore Peter Parker, and he had to act like it.
Okay. Okay, this was fine. He could do this. He would keep his mouth shut, his identity a secret, let himself be carted away, and get saved by the NYPD within a day.
Of course, that plan all went to shit when his only defense mechanism took over. “You know, I’m actually kinda into this. Tighter?” He asked, pasting on a lopsided smile.
The woman groaned. “No, I’m not dealing with another snarker. Hit his leg.”
The tall man nodded, and lowered his gun to Peter’s left calf.
It was at this very moment Peter realized that his senses had been right. Someone was going to get very hurt. The only problem was that that someone was him.
The gun went off with a bang.
Cold metal tore through his leg.
The world went black.
——
The first thing Peter noticed was the hard concrete ground beneath him. He groaned under the oppressive cold, seeping into his bones. His back ached in the awkward position he was propped in, slumped over with his arms above his head.
The second thing that Peter noticed, only a few seconds later, was the searing pain in his leg. He gasped and his eyes flew open, trained on his left calf. Where he expected to see a bloody, gaping hole, he saw his jeans cut off roughly below the knee and haphazard stitches holding together an almost-closed wound. He tried to reach down and move the skin, test its hold, but was stopped by cold metal. He looked up and saw two steel cuffs trapping his hands to the wall, the skin on his wrists already raw. Panic started to flow through his veins like ice water at what they could have found there, but he soon felt the familiar metal of his webshooters and breathed out a sigh of relief. They didn’t know anything, he told himself, and if he kept his cool, they wouldn’t.
With a resigned sigh, he shifted, getting ready to rip the cuffs out of the wall like tissue paper, when he heard a voice say, “Yo, are you awake?”
Goddamnit. Flash was there too.
Peter finally looked at the wall opposite him and saw Flash in the same position as him his knees drawn close to his chest. He was pale as a sheet, but looked a little more inconvenienced than scared.
Peter sighed. “What do you think?”
Flash let out a breath, and if Peter weren’t still trying to process where he was, he would have said that he almost sounded relieved. “You’ve been out for hours. I thought you were dead! God, it would have sucked to have to watch Penis fucking Parker die.”
”Great,” Peter mumbled. “Even here, you’re an asshole.” Even as he said it, though, there was no bite to his words. He had to keep himself under control. He couldn’t act rash, or he might give too much away, one of them could get hurt. Well, worse than they already were.
Peter tried to shift again in a futile attempt to gain some sense of comfort, but cried out suddenly as the motion pulled on his stitches and bolts of pain shot through his leg.
“What the hell happened? What did you just do?” Asked Flash, somehow paling further at his clipped yell. When Peter finally focused his eyes on Flash’s face to calm him down, he saw more than just a scared expression; a growing bruise blossoming on Flash’s cheek, blood sluggishly trickling out of a small gash accompanying it.
“Dude, you’re bleeding!” Peter said. “Did they hurt you?”
Flash blinked. “Hurt me?! You just got shot, why do you care about me?”
“Whatever, that’s fine—“
”What do you mean, ‘whatever’? That was fucking awful to watch, why are you just brushing it off?” Flash asked, his voice rising to almost a shout.
Peter pressed his lips together. It wasn’t like he could say ‘it’ll take you a week to heal that lip, this wound will be gone by Tuesday.’ So, he said nothing.
Flash’s eyes fell. “Whatever, man.”
A long moment passed in silence. Peter could only stand so much of the tension in the room before he asked, “So, what happened before I woke up?”
Flash perked up, almost excited to tell the story. “Oh, it was crazy. After they shot you, they picked you up and put you in some kind of van and started sewing you up which was, like, super gross to watch, your blood is nasty—“
”Wait, what?”
”And then they brought us in here and obviously I fought, I’m not a pussy, but I spit on the lady when she cuffed me to the wall and she kind of, uh, punched me in the face.”
Peter hummed. It made sense.
It was then that Peter heard three sets of footsteps almost a mile away but approaching rapidly. He leaned towards the door and focused all of his attention on the voices.
The man whose voice he recognized as the one who had taped up him and Flash asked frantically, “Riley, what the hell are we gonna do about the other kid? We don’t know anything about him, and he looks dirt poor, anyways.”
The woman—Riley—replied, “Look, we have Eugene, which is all we need. We just stick to the plan, and if we can get the other kid to make some noise, Thompson might pay more. Think of it as a tip.”
A third voice muttered, “Sounds more like bullshit to me.”
“Well, you’re an asshole, I don’t care what you think. Keep bitching and I’m taking your cut, your info, and your stupid jacket.”
”You know what—“
Suddenly, Flash started talking again, effectively drowning out the voices of their kidnappers. Peter groaned.
”But I didn’t just take it, you know, I was like ‘you guys aren’t gonna get me to talk’ and they were like—“
”Flash, shut up.”
”Well, they didn’t say anything, they brought you in which was kinda a three person job—“
”Flash, shut up!”
Flash clamped his mouth shut in surprise. Peter strained his ears, but the kidnappers had ended their conversation, and all that was left was the sound of their pounding feet on the cold floor. Peter swore and leaned his head back against the wall.
”What’s your problem?” Flash asked incredulously. “I was about to get to the good part, like, my escape plan and everything.”
Peter sat straight up. “What? No, man, you’re not trying anything.”
Flash faltered, barely for a second. ”What, you’d rather sit here until they shot you again?” Flash scoffed.
”Yeah, I would. It’s better than trying to muscle my way out.” He could have quite easily, but that would give away too much, that would tell everyone his secret.
”God, you’re such a coward!” Flash hissed. “One of my screws is loose, I think if I can somehow turn around in my knees and use my teeth I might be able to get it out—“
”Stop it.” Peter’s voice was hard, and Flash seemed almost surprised. “You’re not doing anything. You’re cuffed to the wall, and even if you weren’t, three people with guns are about ten seconds away from busting in here. You try anything, they’re putting a bullet in you, too. Just for once, be quiet and do what you’re told.”
Flash cocked his head. “How do you know they’re—“
Just then, the door banged open, and both boys flinched. Riley lead the group, Asshole and Duct Tape each training a gun on each of them. Flash’s bravado immediately drained away, and he shrunk into the wall.
”Okay, boys,” said Riley, the scarf tied around her face rustling with her lips. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Eugene, you’re calling your Daddy and begging him to send five hundred thousand in cash to this address. Tell him that it’s Riley and she wants him spill. Trust me, he’ll know what it means.” She shoved a slip of paper into his shaking hands. Then, she gestured to Peter. “You in the corner, you keep your mouth shut. We don’t need this to be any harder than it is. Got it?”
Peter bit his cheek to keep from blurting out another retort, just nodding instead. The woman took a phone from her pocket that Peter recognized as Flash’s and held his face up to it. It recognized his features and unlocked automatically.
”Call Dad,” she said loudly into the speaker.
“Calling Mr. Thompson.”
Flash blushed as the phone began to ring. It rang once, then twice, before a deep voice said, “Flash, your school has called my five times already, what the hell did you do? Do you need bail money?”
”I’m not doing this,” Flash hissed to Riley.
”Oh yeah?” She asked, shoving the barrel of his gun into his side. “How about now?”
Flash gulped, his eyes wide. He turned slowly back to the phone, His voice shaking as he said, “D-dad, you’re really not gonna like this.”
”Who did you beat up this time? Look, I’ll send over Leonard to clear it up, I don’t know why you’re calling me.”
”No, it’s—it’s not like that.”
”Then what’s it like? I’m in a taxi in Bankok right now, I don’t have time to deal with you.”
Tears started to well up in Flash’s eyes, and Peter felt something like pity poke through his overbearing fear. Flash’s voice shook as he said, ”Okay, but I’m really in trouble this time. I just...I need you to...”
Riley screamed through her teeth, “Just say it!”
“But—“
”No ‘Buts’. Duncan?”
Duct Tape, whose real name was Duncan, approaches Flash slowly, taking a knife from his pocket as he walked. It was short, and Peter almost laughed at the idea of it hurting anyone before he remembered who he was, who Flash was. If they stabbed Flash in the wrong place, he could actually die, and Peter had no doubt this guy was dumb enough to hit a major artery.
Duncan raised the knife above his head, just over Flash’s thigh, the metal glinting in the low fluorescent light. Flash squirmed and tried to skitter away, his face contorting in panic, but he was pinned. Before he could think, Peter blurted, “Hey, Asshole! His dad’s not gonna pay for a busted-up kid!”
Duncan stopped. “Oh, yeah?” He asked, his voice low.
Peter almost relented there, he was so scared, but continued with the kind of forced confidence he had on patrols. “Yeah! You’re basically ripping up a check!”
Duncan paused, and for a moment, Peter thought he had succeeded in distracting him enough to stall any violence. He was wrong.
“Alright. We’ll rip up something else instead.”
Duncan rushed over and crouched next to Peter as Mr. Thompson asked a million questions frantically over the phone. He tightened his black glove and reached down to Peter’s leg. Before he could process anything, a finger was pressing down on his stitches and white hot pain filled his world.
By the time the fire raging in his body receded back to just his calf, his breathing returning to normal and his vision clearing, Riley had hung up the phone and flung it against the wall, shattered pieces littering the freezing ground. Flash had tears running down his face and Peter felt something akin to shame. If he had just had the mask, he could have broken them both out of here a million times over, but instead he had to sit here and take hits that he instinctively wanted to dodge. But—but Flash was more or less unharmed. He was fine. He was okay. And as long as nobody but himself was hurt, then he was doing his job.
As the kidnappers discussed some wrench in their plan, he made a pact with himself. He wouldn’t reveal his identity unless Flash was in any real danger. Peter had been shot before, he could take a few more hits. Flash, on the other hand, could die from a simple beating. Peter almost groaned out loud at what he was doing for his long-time bully. It didn’t matter who he was, though. Peter wouldn’t let anyone else die. So until they tried to put a bullet through Flash’s skull, Peter stayed cuffed by metal he could shatter like glass.
The kidnappers all nodded at one another and opened up to face Peter and Flash. Peter thought inappropriately that they looked like a group of schoolchildren who were overly proud of their biology presentation. “Alright,” said Riley, “Your dad’s not paying us the ransom, and he’s not spilling, either. He said he’d involve the police, which makes this a whole lot more difficult. And I’m pretty sure Screamer over here is the one that complicated all of this, so we’re taking his phone, too. Let’s find out who he’s connected to. Maybe if they pay instead, we’ll let out Eugene before I snap his neck.”
Duncan pulled Peter’s cracked IPhone four out of his pocket. He held it up to Peter’s face. “What’s the passcode, kid?”
Peter laughed, but he was so terrified he could have died. His phone had Spider-Man business on it, and sure, it was coded into a million different phrases and encryptions, but it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. He was pretty sure it would take three boneheads long, either.
He forced an artificial lightness into his voice and said, ”Look at my shoes, man. Do I look like I have anyone with enough money to pay ransom? I can’t even afford Walmart-brand.”
Riley growled from across the room, “This is about way more than just money. Don’t get involved in shit you don’t understand.”
”Oh, I understand, all right,” Peter said. “You’re just a band of idiots making empty threats to a couple of kids. You’re not gonna shoot us, because then you’d lose the only leverage you’ve got.”
”Oh yeah?” Said Duncan right next to his ear as cold metal was pressed into his temple. “How about now? Still think that? Because if you’re not rich, and Thompson doesn’t care about you, we might as well blow your brains out right here.” As much as Peter wanted to freeze, unlock his phone and give himself a few minutes of peace until they inevitably found out everything he was and ruined his life, he forced himself to sigh nonchalantly.
”This ‘gun to the head’ routine is getting really old. You should try something new. Poke out my eye, make me piss in public, switch it up, y’know?”
Riley laughed, and Peter looked up to see her gun in Flash’s mouth, effectively gagging him with metal. Peter blanched at his tear-streaked face and trembling chest. His smile dropped, and Riley laughed. “Alright, how about this? Open your phone or Eugene gets it.”
All it took was one muffled sob from Flash for Peter to remember that this wasn’t about him. Forcing down his own angry tears, he sighed, “Fine. Zero-eight-one-zero. Just let him go.”
The phone unlocked, and Duncan nodded. Riley returned it and stood up, taking her gun with her. Flash winced but relaxed, slumping over himself, held upright only by the cuffs pinning him to the wall.
”Come on,” she said to Duncan and Asshole. “We can figure this shit out in the hall.”
They left and slammed the door shut, locking it with a click, which Peter thought was rather redundant considering both of their victims were bolted to the wall. He breathed a sigh of relief and finally slumped over, biting his lip to keep from moaning in pain as the fire in his leg took over his now free-from-distractions mind.
”Hey, Parker,” Flash whispered like there was anyone there to hear them. “Parker! You okay?”
Peter choked out a groan. “I’m fucking peachy,” He said through heavy pants, but the words held no real bite.
Flash’s voice quivered as he said, “Dude, my dad says he’s not paying. What are we gonna do?”
And Peter somehow found his throat suddenly choked, unwanted tears stinging his eyes. Why did he feel so helpless? He was Spider-Man, but here he was, acting like the terrified teenager he was. Shakily, he said, “I don’t know. Just—just stay quiet, alright? Don’t piss them off or they’ll hit you.”
”Oh, you’re one to talk! You mouth off to these guys, like, every other minute!”
”Yeah, well, that’s different!” Peter snapped, shooting his head up to glare at Flash. “We’re not the same, okay? Stop pretending we are!”
Flash blinked, and his attitude was gone. After a second of silence, he asked quietly, “What do you mean, ‘different’?”
And before Peter could correct himself, try and keep his secret, he heard Riley from whisper, “What the fuck?” Through the door.
Peter froze. They knew. They found a picture he forgot to cover up, a voicemail from Happy, they knew who he really was, they knew he was Spider-Man, they knew, they knew, they knew—
“How does this kid know Tony Goddamn Stark?”
Goddamnit.