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Peter was zooming through the city with his spiderwebs when it hit him.
Literally.
A blast of energy shot through the air, knocking him out of his incredible balance, and making him land in a trash can.
Great start.
He bounced onto his feet ready to take on whatever annoying villain he had been attacked by, only to be met with… Nothing.
The streets were empty on this rather nice night, which was kinda weird for New York, but ok.
Peter made his way through the alleyways and back-streets, trying to find the source of this rather catastrophic event. He peeked into corners, strolled past nice shops, but the source of the laser beam thingy was nowhere to be found.
And neither were people. There was no one there. In fact, Peter wasn't sure he'd seen anyone in this part of the city all night, which was extremely unusual for New York. Also, there were no lights on. Not even the street lights. Was he in a different universe or something?
Something fishy is going on here, Peter thought, and he was in fact not talking about the rather unpleasant smell of the fish that had clung to his suit ever since he fell into that fish bin at the market while fighting a burglar a couple of weeks ago.
Something else was fishy.
After another ten minutes or so, Peter had no answers and even more questions. This wasn't going as great as he'd planned.
He'd just convinced himself that he'd imagined the blast, that this was all a weird hallucination of some sort, and everything was fine, when a sharp jolt shot through his side, making him yelp in surprise and pain.
“Okay…”, he muttered. “Maybe I didn't imagine it.”
A dull aching remained, and Peter decided that now was the time to get out of there.
He reached up to swing away, and got about half-way up to the roof before his webs snapped, making him crash against the wall and barely able to hold on to the top.
Though it was practically torture, Peter managed to pull himself onto the roof of the building, before collapsing. He felt so tired, and the aching was spreading from his side over to his leg and what not.
He managed to clumsily pull the Spiderman mask off, and pressing a hand to his own forehead he could sense a fever rising.
Great, he thought. Just great.
That beam may have been more than just a beam.
With great difficulty and quite a few muttered swear words, Peter managed to get up, and limp over the rooftops. He wasn't sure where he was going, and was pleasantly surprised when he ended up at Stark Towers.
How he managed to get there he had no idea, his limbs were on fire, and something that reminded him suspiciously of nausea was rising in his throat. But whatever had driven him there somehow managed to drag him up the fire escape and in through an open window.
So much for top security.
By the time he climbed through the window, Peter was exhausted. The pain was at this point unbearable, and he felt like throwing up. Sometimes, it felt like a knife was being stabbed and twisted into his skull, and just when he thought the stabbing headache would fade away, it stabbed again.
He limped into Tony's lab, knowing that was the place Tony was most likely to be, while also acknowledging the fact that he was most likely about to get a huge lecture. He wasn't supposed to patrol tonight. He'd broken the rules. Again.
Tony was crouched over some sort of machine, too absorbed in his work to notice Peter standing there. Maybe standing was too strong of a word. He was mostly leaning against the wall trying not to fall to the floor and pass out. Though, now that he thought about it, it sounded quite nice to go unconscious for a couple of hours.
When Tony finally looked up, his face went through a series of emotions, in pretty much this exact order:
Annoyance. Confusion. Horror. And something that reminded Peter suspiciously of worry.
After a little too long of the two heroes staring at each other, Peter managed to form a sentence between the chaos of his surprisingly painful headache and everything else that hurt (and really annoyed him) at the moment.
“I think I'm in the wrong building-”
“Nope.”
Tony seemed to break out of his little rollercoaster of emotions at the sound of Peter's voice, and immediately stepped forward to prevent the young guy from collapsing onto the hard tile floor.
With the help of his dear mentor, Peter managed to limp over to the sofa, where Tony started inspecting him for wounds (or just anything that might reveal why Peter was in pain) straight away. There weren't many physical hints to give away his current pained state though, and the only thing showing that Peter wasn't doing alright at the moment was his body language, and perhaps the thin stream of blood that was now dripping from his nose and staining the white couch, which didn't remain white much longer.
Or maybe he did look terrible. Peter didn't know. He was just trying not to pass out.
“Jeez, kid, what happened to you?”, Tony muttered, while trying to find the source of Spiderman's despair.
“Just… patrolling”, Peter managed to croak out, and winced at how much it hurt to speak. This day was not going as well as he'd hoped for. This week wasn't going great, for that sake. But when did he ever get what he hoped for? He should stop hoping for things. Or maybe he should start hoping for bad things, so good things could happen to him. Or maybe-
“Patrolling, huh? And you don't remember anything else, nothing that could've put you in this state?” Tony was now pacing in front of him, casting nervous glances over to Peter every other nanosecond. Something told Peter Tony had called for a doctor, but he couldn't remember when. The ringing in his ears wasn't exactly helping, but it took his mind off the fact that it was getting harder to breathe, so maybe it wasn't all that bad. He'd be fine. Probably. Maybe.
“Was just… swinging around in Queens somewhere”, Peter got out. “Not far from my apartment, I think”. His breathing had slowed down significantly, it was a miracle he hadn't passed out yet. He was definitely about to.
But then Tony suddenly stopped his pacing, and turned sharply towards Peter. Something in his face told Peter he'd figured whatever it was out. “Wait, Queens?" He paled. “Shit.”
Then everything went black.
When Peter woke up, his head was pounding, and his limbs ached, soar from whatever it was that had happened.
He winced at the sharp lights above him, and tried to remember what happened. When his eyes finally adjusted to the brightness around him, he noticed Tony Stark sitting on a chair nearby fiddling with some tech device. A look around the room told Peter he was in the Medbay. Great.
He tried to shift to a more comfortable position, and groaned when the pounding in his head turned into a stabbing pain for a second or two.
Tony looked up at the sound, and an unsure grin spread across his face.
“Would you look at that? The Spiderling decided to wake up!”
With a great amount of effort, a lot of stabbing in his head, and quite a few muttered curses that Steve would've grounded him for, Peter managed to sit up and gather himself.
“What happened?”, he asked groggily, trying to piece together how he got there.
He'd been patrolling, something about a fish, and then he'd ended up in the tower somehow?
“Oh yeah, I was going to warn you about that”, Tony admitted, and if Peter wasn't so exhausted, he might've thought he saw embarrassment in his mentor's eyes.
“Some alien have been running around the multiverses the past few weeks causing a ton of chaos. Killed a few people as well, it's a miracle you survived. We had to close down that entire block so the alien didn't hurt anyone else, we had a suspicion it might be hiding there.”
So that's why the streets were empty, Peter thought to himself.
“Strange and his freaky wizard friends have been hunting it forever, they managed to catch it a few hours after you were hit by it.”
“I knew aliens would be the death of me”, Peter groaned, and slumped back on the wall, shutting his eyes together hard to block out the pain. It really just made it worse, so instead he opened them again. Just having eyes at the moment felt like a punishment.
Tony seemed to force himself to smile, and leaned forward to ruffle Peter's hair. Normally Peter would've smacked him away at this, but he found he was too tired, and sunk back into the pillows.
“Does it hurt?”, Tony asked after a few minutes of silence.
Just existing has been hurting lately, Peter thought, and looked back at the week. Monday through Friday he'd been continuously bullied by Flash again, which wasn't new, but Flash - like Peter - seemed to be in a bad mood this week, so obviously he took it out on Peter.
It'd been the anniversary of Uncle Ben's death on Friday, and he'd spent that night with Aunt May, looking at memories, visiting his grave, making his favorite food. But Peter hadn't slept that night, and he'd heard May's quiet sobs through the wall. She probably thought he'd been asleep. He hadn't. He'd mainly felt empty, and numb, and what not. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing. Wasn't he supposed to be crying too? He missed Ben, he really did. But for some reason, he wasn't able to show it like May. Maybe there was something wrong with him. He didn't want to think about it. He hadn't realized till now how exhausted he'd been this week. And now that week had ended with almost getting killed by an alien. Just his great Peter luck.
Realizing he hadn't answered Tony's question, he said “I'll be fine.”
Tony didn't seem to believe him, but let him be.
“You'll probably be sore for a few more hours, better just stay here till then. We could work on something in my lab as soon as that obvious headache of yours fades away.”
Peter would in fact much rather work in the lab with Tony than stay in this miserable room with all his miserable everything's.
So he sat up. “My headache's gone”, he claimed, and tried not to grimace at the feeling that his head was going to explode.
His attempt at acting fine mustn't have been very good, ‘cause Tony chuckled a bit and shook his head.
“Yeah, I don't think so, Spider boy.”
Peter sighed, and leaned back again.
“I hate aliens”, he mumbled.
Tony grinned. “Me too, kid. Me too.”