Anywhere but Here
Peter was an excitable person in general, but he'd been more excited than usual this morning upon finding out that the Avengers wanted his help eliminating a large group of enemies. He hadn't wasted any time agreeing to have Happy pick him up, and he couldn't stand still through the excitement while he waited.
The aliens had shown up overnight, and part of the mission was to figure out how they'd arrived without notice, but the main goal was simply to dispatch the strange cat-like creatures before they caused too much more harm to the city and its people. If they had a standard communication method, none of the Avengers could figure it out, so peaceful negotiation had been a non-option from the start.
They struck painful clawed blows, but they were also pretty weak to most any attack, and it couldn't have been more than an hour before the dozens of creatures all lay dead. Peter thought it seemed a little cruel to leave the fallen bodies lying in the streets, but Tony was insistent that "corpse cleanup" was below an Avenger's pay grade as he urged them to return to the tower for debriefing.
Mr. Stark pulled him to Happy's car for the trip back, and Peter tried to assess his injuries as he pulled on his street clothes over the suit and settled in for the ride. He had a shallow cut across his left knee that had ripped through the suit—he hoped Mr. Stark wouldn't be upset about having to make that repair to the fabric and electronics—as well as what felt like developing bruises on both of his upper arms and chest. The most painful was a scratch across his back just below his shoulder blades, but he couldn't get a good look at that without a mirror, and it didn't hurt that badly after popping a couple ibuprofen Happy kept in the car, so he decided to save treating that for later. He really didn't want to annoy Tony by delaying the debriefing session while he took care of minor wounds.
He could feel blood still sliding down his back and from his knee and shuddered in disgust. He'd never get used to that feeling no matter how many cuts he got in battle. He knew from experience it shouldn't last too much longer; with a healing factor like his, clotting was a faster process.
They hadn't had to drive far from his apartment to get to the battle, and even with the increased traffic now that citizens felt safe leaving their homes again, it was only a fifteen-minute trip back to the tower. Peter could have webbed his way there with ease if Mr. Stark hadn't invited him to ride with him. As it was, he leaned back in the seat and tried to will his heart rate down to normal levels until Happy pulled up to the building.
There was one conference room they usually used for debriefings on one of the lower floors. Peter had always liked it because it felt like what he imagined an office meeting room was like; everything was formal but comfortable, and it made him feel like a real adult to be in this room talking strategy with the Avengers. He and Mr. Stark were the last to arrive, and they grabbed the two remaining seats next to each other before Tony called the meeting to order.
Debriefings were a pretty simple matter. They were all supposed to discuss what they'd done well and where they could improve individually and as a team and what they'd learned about the enemy. Sometimes it wasn't very useful, but Peter found that he usually learned a little something in these meetings. Mr. Stark wanted to start off with how the enemies had arrived undetected until they'd caused chaos.
"Maybe they have anti-detection measures on their ships?"
"Probably just the FAA slacking off again. Why can't they deal with this instead?"
"Was the ship small? How tiny do they have to be before it's hard to detect them in the dark?"
Peter knew he should have something to contribute to the discussion, but he felt off his game somehow. He was typically a decent brainstormer, and that was all this part of the meeting was. His mind was in slow motion, which was a little alien to him as someone who could go to school all day, patrol for several hours a night, sleep an average of five or six hours, and then handle repeating the whole process for days on end with no issue. He realized that the heart rate he'd eventually brought down during the car ride earlier was going right back to where it had been after the fight. It brought a confusing sense of unease, and he wondered which came first: the random anxiety or the heart rate. He was still struggling to come up with anything to add when Tony moved the discussion to the next bullet point.
"What about strengths and weaknesses today?" he prompted. Strengths and weaknesses were usually their focus in debriefings. Weaknesses were especially important because they could reflect anything from intra-group fighting to illness—it was surprising how many of the Avengers didn't feel comfortable sitting out of a fight while sick—to being in the middle of developing new abilities.
Peter remembered being on the receiving end of a weakness rant when his spider-sense was newly forming. There wasn't much to say today though. He was sweating way more than he'd expect for just sitting still. Every time he pulled his sleeve up to mop his face dry, it was only a few seconds before it was starting again. He thought he was used to getting sweaty on patrol, but this just felt gross, like being trapped outside for recess in middle school with the sun beating down on him when it was way too hot out.
"Team work seemed pretty on point to me."
"I think we're all a little more scratched up than normal. We could've done more to watch each other's backs while we thinned them out."
He thought he heard Tony moving on to the next topic of discussion, but he wasn't completely sure. He felt like he was listening from underwater while the room revolved around him all of a sudden. He… probably shouldn't feel like that. He hadn't hit his head or anything, so maybe he was getting sick? It was kind of sudden though, and he had to admit that worried him a little.
It was getting harder and harder to focus on what the others were saying, let alone contribute anything to the conversation himself. It was weird. He knew he cared a lot about this, but he just… couldn't right now.
He should say something. The room was darker than he thought it should be, completely black at the edges of his vision and blurring at the center, still seeming to sway before his eyes. He was cold and dizzy and his ears were ringing a little. It was too much to deal with at once. He couldn't shake off how overwhelmed he was with sensation.
His vision was shifting from darkened to missing completely. He felt like he was moving, but he couldn't understand the directions whatsoever without being able to see. He was slipping from… something, and he was out before he knew he was hitting the floor.
Hearing the nearby thud caused a few of the Avengers to jump, and seeing the sheer amount of blood left on the back and seat of the chair Peter had fallen off of made Tony curse in fearful surprise. How could they have missed that for so long? He dropped to the floor next to the kid and gently turned him over to get a closer look at the wound. He'd managed to leak through the spandex suit and still had enough blood to completely soak most of the back of the long-sleeved t-shirt he'd pulled on over it, and Tony shuddered to think how bad the wound itself would look. Bruce stopped him before he pulled off the shirt.
"We'd better do that down in medical." He looked up to find most of the others frozen and staring in varying degrees of worry now and decided Bruce probably knew best. He scooped the kid up with more ease than he expected—then again, he wasn't exactly an expert on kids and their weights—to carry him to the elevator. He tried not to look too much at the dripping red trail he was leaving behind.
Peter groaned in his arms and leaned a sweaty forehead into Tony's neck when he spoke too loudly, asking Friday to send them to the med center. Safely in the elevator, he looked more closely only to find that he'd fallen back into unconsciousness. He was caught off guard when Bruce reached over to measure his pulse and frowned at whatever he felt.
The elevator door slid open with a soft whir, and Tony carried his—no, the, not his, definitely not his, what was he thinking?—kid to one of the beds while Bruce jogged away to wash his hands and grab supplies for Peter. Tony worked off the shirt before loosening the suit, afraid to see the damage.
Bruce ran over in hastily pulled on gloves and scrubs to make sure his patient was being turned over gently enough and frowned in confusion upon seeing a relatively minor cut. It was long, sure—angled down from the bottom of one shoulder blade and ending just before hitting Peter's side mid-torso—but it certainly wasn't deep, especially for someone with a healing factor like Peter's. This should have easily clotted by now for someone like Peter. Hell, even a typical body could have mostly handled a cut like this in the time it had been since the battle.
"I need ice and towels or something else clean and large enough to put pressure on this," Bruce ordered levelly, and it was a sign of how worried Tony really was that he didn't snap back at the idea of receiving orders from someone else.
Bruce used the time waiting to check for other injuries, finding a much smaller cut on his knee that also mysteriously hadn't clotted. Something had to be going on here if even a small wound like that was still bleeding.
Tony ran back in with a large bucket of ice—the man sure knew how to go overboard—and plenty of hand towels to do the job.
"Just one more thing," Bruce said, more of a suggestion than a command now that he had an idea of what was wrong and the confidence to fix it. "Go see if anyone else got hit today. I need to know if anyone is still bleeding."
He laid one of the towels flat over the bigger wound and wrapped one of the other towels around some of the ice to place on top of the first towel. Hopefully, this would be enough to finally spark the boy's body into healing the damage.
It wasn't long before Tony returned and proved his hypothesis right. Most of the team had some minor cut from the battle that wasn't clotting properly. Only one had a puncture small enough that it had clotted on its own already. Luckily, Peter's wound was by far the largest, and they had time to safely take care of the more minor injuries after this.
"They must've had some kind of anticoagulant," he explained. "Could be naturally occurring for them, could be applied for battle. Either way, it just means everyone will need a little help to heal any punctures or cuts from today. Nothing too difficult."
Peter shifts underneath his hand, probably confused considering he was too out of it to remember leaving the conference room. He groaned before Tony leaned down to take care of it.
"Stay still, kid," he started, ever the people person. "Bruce is taking care of that cut you got today. You're making it harder for him."
Peter still looked dazed. He didn't offer any reply, but he did stop struggling, so at least he was conscious enough to understand them now.
"Yes, yes, I know," Tony went on. "Where's the lecture? Well, I decided to go easy on you since you're hurt, but just you wait. You'll regret ever thinking of hiding something this bad once you're better, kid."
Despite the pain and confusion, Peter smiled. Mr. Stark never had been good at being straightforward when it came to his own emotions. This was the Stark equivalent to an, "I love you, and holy fuck, don't scare me like that again."