A/N: This one-shot has been bouncing around in my head for a long while now so I thought I'd finally write it down and share it with you guys. I got the name for this fic from the Ultimate Spiderman cartoons. They seem to use that phrase a lot and I think it's hilarious :). This happens after Michelle's Master Plan, so Peter and Lia are together. I'm trying to come up with a good ship name for these two but I'm having some trouble. Anyone else have any ideas? I'm open to suggestions.
Please read and review! Unfortunately, I don't own the Avengers. Or Spiderman. Just Lia. Man, it would be epic if I owned Spiderman...
The first thing he registered was sound. There was a constant, consistent beeping noise to his right. A heart rate monitor. Something slightly damp was weighing on his right arm, cutting off circulation and causing it to go numb. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air that smelled faintly of antiseptic and strawberry shampoo. He winced at the sharp pain he got in his ribs as he did so.
Peter opened his eyes. He was in a hospital room in the compound's medical facility. He winced at the bright light reflecting off of the room's white walls. His left arm was in a cast and his ribs were taped. His head hurt. He felt his face and winced when he touched the bruise around his right eye. At least he hadn't broken his nose again. What had happened? Peter struggled to remember.
The weight on his arm shifted. Peter looked down to see Lia sitting in a chair next to his hospital bed, her upper body laying on the bed, using his arm as a pillow while she slept. There were dark bags under her eyes. Her hair was slightly damp, revealing the fact that she had showered recently. That must be where the strawberry smell came from.
Peter began to remember a little of what had happened. Lia was there, he recalled. They were walking hand in hand down the street in Queens when Ned called him, shouting about some guy in a goblin costume flying around New York. Peter had immediately sprung into action, dragging Lia into a nearby alleyway with him so he could peel off his clothes (he was wearing the suit under them). Lia had grabbed the phone from him so he could change and began talking to Ned, gathering more information.
Once Peter had changed and stowed his clothes safely in Lia's backpack, he grabbed her waist with one hand and used the other to shoot a stream of web-fluid, pulling them both into the air. Peter remembered Lia laughing as they swung between the city buildings. She always loved it when Peter took her with him.
Before long, they had reached Times Square, where a maniac in a grotesque costume was flying around on some sort of hovercraft and shouting that he was the Green Goblin. Peter set Lia down on the roof of one of the taller buildings where she could see the area and left her to do her thing before swinging over to confront the Goblin creature.
The confrontation between the two was surprisingly short. Peter hadn't expected the goblin man to be quite so powerful. Peter swung upwards and landed on the building he had dropped Lia off on. The goblin man threw a pumpkin bomb at her and Peter lunged forward, pushing her out of the way and taking the brunt of the blast. He was fine, but his web shooters were fried. She tried to increase the wind power so as to blow the guy off of his hoverboard thing, but by the time she got a gust big enough, the man had moved out of the way, leaving Peter to take the blow. The last thing he remembered was falling off the building, Lia's horrified face peering over the edge.
Peter maneuvered his left arm over toward the girl currently sleeping on his arm with the intent of waking her up but was stopped from doing so by a very tired looking Tony Stark aggressively shushing him from the doorway of his hospital room.
"No no no no no! DON'T. WAKE. HER. UP," he whispered fiercely.
Peter put his arm back. "But my arm is numb!" he argued quietly.
Tony walked over and grabbed a pillow off of one of the many chairs in the room. Ever so slowly, he placed a hand under the slumbering girl's head and slid the pillow under it at the same time that Peter pulled his arm out. She didn't seem to notice a difference, hardly stirring.
Tony sighed in relief before addressing Peter again. "This is the first time she's slept in three days. So help me, kid, if you wake her up I'll make you spar with Nat, even in your currently broken state."
"She hasn't slept in three days?" Peter asked, concerned.
Tony nodded. "Since you got here three days ago she's barely left your side. She hasn't left this room except to use the bathroom. Nat had to lock her in the bathroom earlier just to get her to take a shower and change her clothes. We have to bring her food and stay in here to make sure she eats it. And even then she barely eats any of it."
Peter noticed a darkened area on the tile floor. It looked like it had been burned. He pointed at it. "What's that?"
"That," Tony gestured toward the area, "is the result of our first and only try to get her to leave the room. She went all mini-Thor on Bucky when he came in to try and take her out."
"Is he okay?" Peter asked.
Tony waved off his concerns. "Yeah, Elsa's fine. She didn't even hit him. We let her be after that. She just wanted to make a point, I think. She feels seriously guilty about all this. She's blaming herself for what happened."
"What happened exactly? I don't remember much."
"I got a phone call from Tesla here. She was completely freaking out, totally panicked, saying you fell off a building and it was all her fault and there was some weirdo dressed like a gargoyle flying around taunting her. So I sent Nat and Clint to help her out. They took care of gargoyle guy and scraped you off the street. You were pretty messed up when you first got here. Frankly, I'm surprised you're even awake and talking right now."
"What's wrong with me?"
"Well let's see." Tony began counting on his fingers. "You had a pretty nasty concussion, a couple broken ribs, a broken arm, a cracked skull, a collapsed lung, and some serious bruising all over the place, not to mention possible internal bleeding. After three days, you just have the bruises and broken bones, and even those aren't as bad as they should be. This whole super fast healing thing has pretty much saved your life."
Peter looked down at Lia. "She's really blaming herself?" he asked.
"Yeah. That's one heck of a girlfriend you've got there, kid. She's a keeper." Tony turned to leave the room. "I'm gonna go tell the doctors and nurses and stuff that you woke up. And whatever you do." He turned back and pointed at him, "Do. Not. Wake. Her. Up!" He pointed to his eyes and then back toward Peter before exiting.
Using his free arm (which, thankfully, was no longer numb), Peter took Lia's hand in his. He rubbed his thumb back and forth across the back of it, feeling horrible, not just because he was sore all over, but because he had made his sweet girlfriend feel this way. It wasn't her fault; far from it. It was that goblin guy's fault. He was the one that took out his web shooters. If he'd been able to use those he wouldn't have fallen over a dozen stories to the ground. A fall from that height would have killed anyone else, he reasoned. He was lucky to be Spiderman.
Suddenly, the door was thrust open so hard it banged into the wall. Lia shot upright, groggy and disoriented, her hand pulled from Peters. Pietro came running in, Bucky following behind him slowly. He scowled.
"Pietro! You woke her up!" he scolded the speedster.
Pietro looked sheepish. "I forgot we were supposed to be quiet."
Tony came in shortly after, followed by a doctor and a few nurses. He frowned when he saw Lia sitting up, not quite fully awake. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
"You had one job. All of you. Just one. And you still manage to mess it up," he said, mostly to himself.
"Hey, don't look at me!" Bucky defended himself. "Pietro is the one who barged in and made the door slam into the wall."
Lia looked around the room, trying to make sense of where she was and who she was with before her eyes landed on Peter. Seeing him conscious, her mouth fell open.
"Hey, Lia," he said, smiling a little.
Lia covered her mouth with her hands, tears running down her cheeks, before standing from her chair to hug him, minding his many injuries. He sat up a little, hugging her as tightly as his bandages would allow. The rest of the room went silent, watching the pair's interaction.
"I thought you were dead," she said into his shoulder. "I watched you fall off that building and hit the ground and I thought you were dead."
"Hey, I'm not dead, am I? I'm right here, and I'm fine," he comforted her, breathing in the strong scent of her strawberry shampoo that he'd caught a whiff of earlier.
"And that stupid goblin guy kept hovering around me, telling me it was my fault, I was the one that killed you…" she was taking deep breaths, trying hard to calm herself.
"Shh…" he shushed her. "It's not your fault. It's his. He's the one that took out my web shooters."
Peter noticed that most of the room's inhabitants had left, leaving only the doctor and nurses. Tony must have shepherded the rest of them out.
"But it is my fault," she replied through her tears. "I'm the one who sent that gust of wind that blew you off the building."
"Hey." he pulled back so that he could see her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Don't blame yourself for this, okay? You had no idea my web shooters were out of commission. Okay?"
She nodded, breathing shakily. The doctor cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, Miss Lewis, but I have to ask you to leave the room for a minute. We just need to check a few things," he said quickly, seeing her face. "You can come back in as soon as we're done."
Lia looked back at Peter, who nodded. "It's okay. Go out for a minute. Get something from the vending machines they have stashed around this place. I'll still be here when you get back."
She stood, hesitantly, and walked slowly out of the room. The doctor closed the door. "Now then, Mr. Parker, this shouldn't take long…"
ooOOoo
What the doctor said wouldn't take long ended up taking around forty-five minutes. Peter grimaced every time he glanced at the clock. Lia was going to worry her socks off until she was allowed back in the room.
"Okay then, that seems to be it. Is there anything we can get you, Mr. Parker?" asked the Doctor.
"Yeah," answered Peter, annoyed. "My girlfriend."
The doctor and nurses left the room and Lia re-entered it almost immediately after they left. Peter scooted over on the hospital bed and patted the spot next to him. She climbed onto the bed with him, settling into his side. He put his good arm around her.
"How are you doing?" she asked softly.
"Better. I'm sore all over, but it honestly doesn't hurt too bad," he answered truthfully.
"That's good," she replied, then grimaced. "I don't think I'll ever get that image of you out of my head."
"What image?" Peter asked.
"The one where you look like street pizza."
Peter couldn't help himself. He laughed out loud, despite the biting pain in his ribs. "Street pizza, huh? Very eloquent."
"Well, I prefer that term to 'mangled in a broken heap on the ground'."
Peter sobered a little. "I'm sorry I worried you so much," he said, tracing designs into her arm with his fingers.
She nuzzled further into his side, yawning a little. "I'm just glad you're okay. I don't like thinking about what would happen if you…" she couldn't finish the sentence.
Peter pressed his lips into her hair. "You don't ever need to worry about that. I may leave sometimes, and I may get hurt, but I'll always come back."
"But what if you don't?" she asked in a small voice.
"I will," he replied, tightening his arm around her. "I promise."
"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep, Peter," she chastised, starting to nod off.
Peter bent close to her and whispered in her ear. "But those are the best kind."
She smiled softly, drifting off to sleep, safe in Peter's arms. Peter closed his eyes as well, giving in to the exhaustion that had slowly crept over him.
When Nat came in to check on Peter (she told herself she was checking on Peter, but in reality, she was checking on Lia) a little while later, she smiled one of her rare smiles when she saw them asleep together on the hospital bed. She pulled out her phone and snapped a few pictures, sending them to the rest of the Avengers, before pulling a blanket over the pair.
As she turned to leave, she glanced back at them once more. It seemed, that, after so long and so much, both of them had finally found home and solace in one another. Nat smiled one more time and closed the door behind her.