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The training room was quiet in that rare, temporary kind of way with the lull between missions when no one was bleeding, nothing was on fire, and the worst thing anyone had to worry about was who left protein bar wrappers in the quinjet fridge.
Steve Rogers was taking full advantage of the peace, running shield drills with the kind of focus that only men from the 1940s or Olympic athletes could manage. He stood at one end of the chamber, feet braced and jaw set, hurling his vibranium shield against strategically placed wall panels, listening to it ping and ricochet through the space like some kind of patriotic pinball.
Peter Parker, meanwhile, was doing his best impression of a well-behaved house cat, which was curled up at the edge of the mat with his back against the wall, sipping a slightly too warm protein shake through a bendy straw, and watching the whole routine with half-lidded eyes. His mask was rolled up just above his nose, giving him a vaguely rodent-like appearance as he sucked at the drink. It tasted like chalk and fake banana, which was to say that it was tolerable. He had no real complaints. Days like this were rare.
“You gonna get off the bench today, or just enjoy the show?” Sam’s voice echoed lazily from across the room as he stretched his shoulders with a loud pop.
Peter tilted his head without sitting up, looking over with mock innocence. “Hey, I’m totally engaged. See? I even made the protein sacrifice.”
Steve didn’t look away from the target as he lined up another throw. “You’re up after this round.”
Peter groaned under his breath, finishing off the last of his shake with a noisy slurp. “But I did stuff this week. I pulled a guy out of a car! I webbed three separate purse snatchers! I think one of them was Canadian.”
Steve threw the shield without replying. It slammed into one wall, rebounded with a sharp clang, hit another panel on the far side, and changed direction again. A textbook series of angles until the third bounce went slightly off-pattern. Something about the velocity or the spin shifted. Maybe Steve had thrown a little harder than he meant to, or maybe the impact warped the flight just enough to skew the trajectory. Whatever the reason, the shield came off that last surface much faster than expected. It curved out wide, skipped off a corner beam, and was suddenly flying across the room. Not toward Steve or the mat secured to the wall behind him, but toward Peter.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then, without fanfare or fuss, Peter’s hand came up.
He caught it.
One hand, fingers wrapped cleanly around the rim, with the other still holding his empty bottle. The impact made a low whum noise against his palm, not even jostling him where he sat. It was like watching someone pluck a frisbee out of the air. Effortless.
He blinked behind the lenses of his mask, looked down at the shield, then back up at Steve. “…Was that for me? Is that my cue to get up?”
Steve was already walking toward him, brows drawn together. “No. That was a bad bounce.”
Peter stood slowly, holding the shield out like he wasn’t sure where to set it. “Oh. Uh. Well, here.”
Steve took it without saying anything for a second. Then he glanced at Peter’s hand, like he expected to see bruising, swelling, something. But there was nothing just slim fingers and a relaxed grip.
“You caught that one-handed.”
“Yeah. It was coming at me.”
“That was a full force throw, kid.”
Peter tilted his head, confused. “So… I wasn’t supposed to catch it?”
Sam, now walking over, stopped short when he saw the expression on Steve’s face. “Wait, what happened?”
“Spider-Man just caught a vibranium shield at a hundred miles an hour with one hand,” Steve said with simultaneous relief and mild concern.
Peter held up the hand in question. “I mean, maybe not that fast.”
Tony chose that moment to enter the room, coffee in one hand and a tablet in the other. He didn’t look up at first. “FRIDAY just flagged a kinetic spike in this room…” Then he glanced up and saw Peter, standing there with his mask rolled halfway up and a sheepish look on his face. “…Okay. What happened?”
“Shield hit a beam, redirected toward him,” Steve summarized.
“And he caught it?” Tony asked, squinting. “With what? A web line?”
“No,” Sam said, eyebrows lifted. “His hand.”
Peter raised both palms. “Guys, it’s really not that big of a deal. It’s lighter than a fridge, and I’ve caught those before.”
Tony blinked and recoiled a bit at that statement. “Fridge? When did you… have you had a fridge thrown at you?”
“I mean not like that. Not mid-air. But, like… falling fridges. Occasionally airborne. It happens.”
Steve crossed his arms. “You didn’t flinch. You didn’t brace. You just reached out and stopped it.”
Peter looked around, now visibly uncomfortable. “I mean, I panicked, kind of? Reflexes, y’know? Spidey-sense and all that.”
Sam looked between them. “Wait. So you’ve just… been sitting on that kind of strength?”
Peter hesitated. “It’s not a big deal. You guys already know I’m strong.”
“Yeah, but you never show it like that,” Sam replied. “You act like your bones are made of twigs and friendship.”
“I prefer bones made of friendship,” Peter mumbled.
Tony set down his coffee and walked over, studying Peter with an appraising look and a clap of his hands. “Okay. Time for a proper test.”
Peter took a slow, exaggerated step backward. “Oh no. That’s the same tone you use when you say things like ‘just wear the prototype, it won’t catch fire.”
Tony ignored him. “FRIDAY, how fast was that shield moving on final trajectory?”
“Ninety-seven miles per hour, Mr. Stark. Impact absorption indicates kinetic strength equivalent to 2,100 pounds of resistance.”
Tony pointed at Peter. “You absorbed a literal ton of force with your wrist.”
Peter looked mildly horrified. “…Okay, that does sound worse when you say it out loud.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “So how much have you been holding back?”
Peter scratched his neck. “I dunno. Most of it?”
Steve’s voice was quieter now, more thoughtful than accusing. “Why?”
Peter hesitated. “Because it scares people when I don’t. I don’t want to risk putting a hole through someone because I didn’t pull my punch.”
Tony actually looked up from the tablet. “That’s… not wrong.”
Bruce’s voice came over the comms. “He once crushed a grade 5 titanium tubing piece because he sneezed while holding it.”
Peter looked sheepish. “I at least tried to hold it in.”
Steve handed the shield back slowly, the leather strap still warm from his grip. “Do me a favor,” he said, tone carefully casual. “Try throwing it. Same form I used.”
Peter blinked behind his lenses. “You want me to… throw the shield?”
“You’ve seen me do it a hundred times,” Steve said. “Just once. Let’s see how it flies with your reflexes behind it.”
There was a flicker of hesitation, but Peter took the shield, adjusted his grip, and shifted into a throwing stance. “Alright. I’ll try not to dent it.”
He gave it a light test swing. The balance felt… okay. Not perfect, but manageable considering that the brace was sized for Steve’s hand. Then he looked at the far wall with the reinforced panel Steve had been bouncing off all day, and exhaled slowly.
“Okay,” Peter muttered, “for real this time.”
He stepped into the throw.
The shield screamed through the air. A violent blur of red, white, and steel as it blasted across the room, moving faster than it ever had under Steve’s arm. It didn’t bounce. It didn’t ricochet. It hit the far wall dead-center and buried itself into the padding with a deafening SKREEEEN, the vibranium disc cutting through the reinforced panel like it was drywall.
There was a long, high pitched resonant hum.
The vibranium vibrated in place like a struck tuning fork, the sound pulsing out into the room, through the walls, before finally tapering off into silence. Not a rebound. Not a ricochet. It was force met by immovable surface and the surface lost.
Everyone flinched at the harsh tone.
The shield didn’t even shake. It was wedged into the wall, sunk deep into the substructure with concrete dust and insulation drifting down around it. The impact had cracked the padding like it was nothing. It looked less like a training throw and more like a breach charge had been fired into the wall.
Peter blinked. “Uh. Oops.”
Steve walked over first, eyes wide, expression unreadable. He wrapped his hands around the shield and gave it a pull.
Nothing.
He tried again. Harder this time.
Still stuck.
Tony let out a slow whistle, arms crossed. “You wedged vibranium. That’s… actually kind of impressive.”
Peter stepped forward, sheepish but curious, and planted one hand on the edge of the shield. “I think it’s just, like… caught on something. Here, lemme—”
With a casual tug, he pulled.
The shield came loose with a gritty shhhhck, like someone peeling metal from a stone wall, which was exactly the case. The whole thing popped free in his grip with no strain, no flex, just a clean snap of release, and Peter held it out like he’d just retrieved a ruler from behind a couch.
“See?” he said brightly. “Not that bad.”
Steve stared at the section of his reinforced wall with a shield-shaped hole, then at the shield, then back at Peter.
Sam stepped forward, lips parted. “Did you just pull that out like it was a goddamn pushpin?”
Peter looked down at it. “Kinda felt like it. You ever pull a pencil out of drywall? It’s like that, but with a cool vibration.”
Bruce’s voice crackled over the comms. “That ‘wall’ is rated to absorb direct impacts from Mjolnir and Steve’s throws.”
Tony pointed at Peter. “And he just made it his art project on structural engineering.”
Peter raised his hands. “Okay, yes, but I said I’d try not to dent anything. I never said I’d succeed.”
Sam started laughing, leaning on a nearby countertop. “Man, you’ve been sandbagging us since day one.”
“I thought we liked it when I held back?” Peter offered. “You know… walls don’t fall over, people don’t get splatted, training rooms don’t get—” He gestured to the crater. “—uh… that’d be Exhibit A, I guess.”
Tony shook his head, chuckling as he turned to leave. “Welcome to the real world, Spider-Man, where things break. Try not to rip the building in half next time.”
Peter held the shield awkwardly as Steve stepped closer, still silent. Finally, Cap reached out and took the shield back but not without a little sideways look at Peter’s hand, like he was trying to work out what the hell just happened.
“Just… don’t throw it at full strength next time,” Steve said, voice dry. “Please.”
Peter smiled under the mask. “Cross my heart.”
As the others started to file out a little while later, Peter lingered for a moment, staring at the gash in the wall with a lightly annoyed acceptance.
Then, under his breath, he muttered.
“…I really should’ve used my left hand.”