Title: My Favorite Weakness (is You)

Summary: People get hurt.

Rating: T (for violence)

A/N: This is my first work, so please let me know what you think! I am open to feedback and constructive critisicm, thoughts, ideas, and anything you'd like to share about the story!


- Chapter Two: People Who Stab You -


On Friday, Peter managed to stop several robberies, car thefts, return a stolen bike, but unfortunately no toilet paper roll thefts. He hadn't heard back from Mr. Stark, but he figured no news was good news. Peter noticed people seemed to be breaking into cars more with the virus fears floating around, but other than that it was a pretty regular start to the weekend.

Tony's Friday, however, was anything but regular. He'd spent all day (and night) swamped with paperwork and phone calls, and was only forced into an in-person meeting once by some important-looking official guy. He re-prepares everything in the tower for the new residents, something that wasn't difficult considering it had been done before, at a time that felt all too long ago now. His thoughts (and the idea of unread paperwork - unwanted homework on a disliked topic) chased him into his lab, where he locked himself away, without his phone, choosing to busy himself with his work. Distract his mind. Focus on something that wasn't painful. Honestly, he was hiding from the fact that somehow in the last... x amount of hours, the rogue Avengers had been given permission to move back to New York. The way Tony understood it, is that he is the new ward for the Avengers Team, not that he believed in the team anymore. How could these idiots possibly see Steve as ever becoming a part of the team after all that had happened? And sure, Wanda, Vision, and Barnes were still MIA, but Barton? Romanoff? Wilson? These people weren't teammate material anymore; these were people who would stab you in the back and ask you to apologize for standing in the way.

And Tony says No.

Tony spends all night tinkering, oblivious to the time, until his Metallica volume diminishes upon an enterance from Pepper.

She greets him with a cup of coffee, and he accepts it for the peace offering it is.

"You can't hide back here forever, you know."

Tony shrugged the comment off, tucking the coffee mug into his work corner.

"I don't see why not, it's worked thus far."

Pepper only scoffed at him, following him on the reverse side of the table to hold his attention.

"You know what I think about your problem-procrastination strategy."

"Me? Procrastinate? Never. I do think you make some great points, however."

"Tony," Pepper protested, seeing where this was going (or wasn't going, for that matter).

"On a totally unrelated note," he continued, "could I come back with a solution to my problems at another time? They definitely seem like 'tomorrow' issues."

"Tony."

"Hm?" He took a long swig from his coffee, using this time of silence to finally make eye contact.

"It *is* tomorrow. You've been in here all night."

"So it's Saturday. Work can wait until Tuesday."

"If this had solely to do with the company, I'd agree. However, we both know it isn't about that."

"So you're agreeing it can wait until Wednesday?"

"Tony."

"Well we both know Thursdays are reserved for visitation."

"Tony." Pepper's voice got quieter, and Tony knew his gig was up.

Tony gripped his mug with on hand, leaning back in his chair, and rubbed a slow hand down his suddenly exhausted, worried face. He bit the inside of his cheek in contemplation, freezing for just a moment. Pepper walked around the table, stopping at his side, her presence all but supporting.

After a moment, he seemed to realize her presence, and looked up at her dolefully, before setting down his empty cup and knocking the desk.

"Whoever said 'work hard, play hard,' must not have done a good job; because from my experience, personal success is met with more responsibility. I *am* doing a good job, right?" His eyes met her, looking for a response more than listening for one. Whatever he was looking for in Pepper, he must have found it, because he looked back down with a grim smile (but at least there was a smile) as Pepper touched his arm.

"You're smart enough to know you're doing the best job."

At that note, Tony got up, unsure as always of how to respond to a compliment.

"Well, duty calls."

"And sleep left a message, please be sure to attend to it sooner than later?"

"We'll see."

After Pepper left, Tony went and got the paperwork. He read through everything, taking breaks every few pages to distract himself, secretly appreciating the time he got alone to process. And process he did, and by late-afternoon he'd made it through the paperwork, a new set of upgrades for his suit, and a good bit of whiskey.

Steve, Clint, and Natasha knew all too well that Tony would make his appearance at his own pleasure, so they settled in quietly those first few days, patient and thankful.


- Day 2 -


Peter's Saturday, similarly to Mr. Stark's, ended up being painful as well; only where Mr. Stark's pain was more, emotional (don't tell him that), Peter's was physical. With all his online homework out of the way, he'd planned on spending the entire weekend on patrol. Ned had to leave early Saturday to spend the day with his cousins, so he and Peter woke up, packed up, and planned on catching up after dinner. After his daily text to Mr. Stark ("Hi Mr. Stark, this is Peter, just wanted to let you know I'm going out on patrol! Have a great Saturday! Please let me know if I can help with anything! Thanks! Peter"), he immediately suited up and swung off into the early morning sunshine.

Everything ran smoothly for the first few hours. He helped some teenage tourists find their hotel after their phones had died, he stopped a guy who'd snagged a lady's purse and gotten that returned, and turned in some guy who he caught going car-to-car peering in windows for valuables and checking for unlocked doors, loose trunks, and easy-to-break car parts.

Just after noon, he heard an apartment alarm go off, and followed the sound to a fourth-story apartment, the loud ringing coming from a window, far above the parked cars below, whose lock had apparently been slid open the wrong way, from the outside fire escape. Peter didn't hesitate to slide in the open window into a guest room, only realizing after he was in that the overwhelming noise was taking out his ability to hear anything in the dimly-lit apartment.

"Hello," he called out, hoping not to scare the owners of they were in there, "is anyone here?"

His spider-sense warned him to duck, and he did so just in time to look up to a kitchen butter knife quivering in the wall above him where his shoulders had just been. He rolled to the right, using the nearest hall for protection.

"Hey, I know it may be difficult to believe, but I'm not butter!"

He waited only a second before peeking back around the corner to spot who had thrown it. They were already gone, however, so Peter ran down the hall to find them. He went straight for the fire escape, just to check for anyone, but they weren't out there, so he turned back inside.

Leaving the guest room for the second time, he called out again, offering the familiar game prompt:

"Marco!"

If "Polo" answered back, he wouldn't have known; all he could hear was the ringing fire alarm, which seemed to resonants inside his head, throbbing off the top and bottom of his skull.

"Karen, could you help with the noise?"

If Karen said anything, Peter couldn't tell it apart from the ringing, but after a moment he found that she had somehow managed to block out most of the noise. He thought he heard a faint door slam, but it might have been closer, depending on how much noise Karen was blocking out. The alarm was still ringing in his aural memory regardless, and he tried to shake the noise out of his head while he crept down the second hall.

Looking into an empty room as he passed, he figured the owner of the apartment had to be a jeweler or something, since there were empty ring molds and weird tools and pictures of fancy diamonds and jewelry everywhere in it. That alse made sense why someone would rob an apartment this high above the ground with only two possible ways down.

He walked into an open doorway, which opened to his left to reveal the front room of the apartment. He then noticed a man struggling with the front door, tugging on the handle, then watched him feel the bolt lock above the handle which required a key to lock and unlock.

"I can tell you're more accustomed to breaking *in* to homes rather than breaking out of them," Peter offered, lifting his arm with the intent to web the man as soon as he turned toward him.

The ski-masked man, however, didn't flinch at all, and it took Peter a second to realize it was because he couldn't hear him with the alarm still blaring outside of his mask.

So Peter went ahead and webbed one of the guy's gloved hands, the one that was on the doorframe; he wanted to make sure the door could still open and close. The man jumped back, pling awkwardly on his shoulder, and tried to twist one way before he realized he had to twist the other way to get his arm to cooperate.

"Sorry-not-sorry," Peter said mostly to himself, knowing the guy couldn't hear him.

The guy's eyes flashed with recognition which quickly turned to anger, and his hand quickly went for his coat, smoothly reaching into a pocket. Peter's spider-sense flared again, louder this time, and he quickly took a few steps forward and webbed the guy's hand in place.

He quickly figured there was probably some weapon that Peter would gladly not see for himself, since his spider-sense was still loud. He swiftly shot more webs into the burglar's arms, ensuring that whatever weapon his hand had a grip on would not leave his coat pocket, when all of a sudden he felt a searing pain enter his right shoulder, all the way down to his bone. He cried out, which felt weird since he could only hear it in his head, and his entire right arm constricted in response to the now radiating pain; he instinctively reached back with his left arm, finding a hand gripping something that was digging into his shoulder, right under his shoulder blade. He twisted the person's wrist, hard, causing them to let go, probably due to a few broken bones. He turned around, punching the guy in his masked face, not too hard but just enough to knock him down.

How stupid could he be? Why wouldn't he think to look for a second guy? Just because they were four stories up a fire escape didn't mean that only one guy would have made the climb.

He looked at his shoulder, trying to assess the damage. He tried to move it, but a flash of pain caused his vision to go spotty, and he decided he could only do without one of his senses for now. He saw the guy on the ground move, and Peter went to web him up, but froze when he saw what was in his hand. Peter didn't *do* guns. However, watching this guy, it appeared, strangly enough, that this robber didn't seem comfortable with one either. His hand was shaking as he pointed it at Peter, and the burglar yelled something at him, beckoning to him for something. With wide eyes, Peter slowly lifted his hands, which seemed to be what the burglar wanted, because he stood up and backed out of the room, gun still trained on Peter.

Those seconds passed by slowly, and Peter could only feel three things: the pain radiating from his shoulder to the rest of his body, fear of the man going the weapon in front of him, and the blood path trickling down his shoulder, under his suit, already finding its way to his lower back. Those three feeling dominated every millisecond, and it wasn't until the man disappeared behind the hallway's walk towards the fire escape that Peter released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, which unfortunately released another wave of pain. This wave caused him to fall on one knee, but his thoughts focused on the escaping man, and he refused to let his other leg give out on him. Instead, he picked himself back up, taking g a few steps forward. Before reaching the doorway, he turned back to the first man, the one webbed to the front wall.

Peter held up a finger to him, his left arm still pressed against his right shoulder, trying to hold the pain in. "You stay there," he ordered, and turned the corner.

By the time he got to the fire escape, he could barely see the man escaping two floors below him through the holes in the metal frame. He looked out the entrance of the alleyway, and saw flashing blue and red lights reflecting off the walls; the police must be taking the front entrance, then. He tested his right arm, seeing if he could put weight on it, but that was an easy no for now. So, he climbed onto the outside of the fire escape and half fell/half jumped down to the one below it, almost catching up with he man already. He dropped again, turning so he was looking at the man from the fire escape above him. The man glancd up at him, then jumped through the last fire escape, using the railing to control his fall. Peter climbed onto the first floor fire escape and shot a web at the man, now on the ground. It stuck his leg to the cement, and the man fell on his face.

"Ouch," Peter commented. It was then that Peter realized he still couldn't hear anything, not himself, not the man who was probably swearing up a storm, not the alarm coming from three stories above him nor the sirens that had to be accompanying the flashing lights.

"Hey Karen, could you please return my ears?" Immediately sound returned, and Peter jumped into the corner of the railing, squatting to look comfortable, while more realistically he was trying to hide the fact that his arm hurt like heck.

"Hey, you know, if you-" Peter didn't finish what he was going to say, because when the guy turned, he had his gun trained on him again. Peter jumped back, onto he further corner, reaching around but only finding air. His breathing increased, and the silence he'd experienced earlier was now starkly replaced by intense minute noises, such as the creaking of the shifting metal and his increased heart rate pushing blood through his ears. Time seemed to freeze again, the only evidence otherwise being the man's shaking hands.

Then he spoke, in a deep but scared voice.

"Let me go."

He motioned outward with the gun, pushing it forward, asking for an action to be taken. Peter told himself to focus, and remembered to breath in, before a gunshot filled his sense and he fell backwards, out of shock. His head whipped up to see policemen filing in the alley as he lost his balance, falling backwards off the fire escape. He landed on his back, and was sure he'd just been shot in the same shoulder. He rolled sideways, crying out, and gripping his shoulder, blinking rapidly through the paint that was coursing through his body.

He turned his head sideways, on the ground, to look at his attacker. He didn't understand what he saw, at first. The man's hands were bleeding, and the police were still walking forward, guns trained on him. Why was *he* bleeding?

All of a sudden, everything clicked.

The knife. Peter hadn't been shot, but rather it was the knife. It must have been the police who shot, at the sight of a man about to shoot Spider-Man.

Then, Peter must have fallen on his back, pushing the partially inserted knife into his back.

Peter sat up, and tried to slow down his breathing. He could see the police had surrounded the burglar now, had taken his gun ("it's a fake," he thought he heard one of them say), and were trying to figure out what to do about the webbing attached to his foot. One of them turned to him, and Peter waved and gave them a thumbs up. He had to get out of there. He knew he was only a several blocks away from his apartment, but he honestly didn't think his shoulder was something he could just bandaid up; he was scared to look at his shoulder with the suit off, and wasn't sure how much blood he was losing. He figured he'd climb to the roof using his left arm and call Mr. Stark from there.

Less than halfway up, however, his injury proved to have other plans. The tension from climbing must have been pulling something, because it felt like the wound was just tearing, ripping, or twisting with every pull upwards.

"Karen, would you please call Mr. Stark? I hope this constitutes as an emergency."

"Calling Mr. Stark."

The line rang, but after several tones, clicked off to silence.

"Mr. Stark," Peter asked, hopefully.

"Mr. Stark did not answer the call."

"Oh." Peter pulled up again, continuing the journey to the roof. He was over halfway now.

"Can you call again?"

"Of course, Peter. However, I would like to note that he has not responded to either of my previous alerts."

"When were those sent?"

"When you were stabbed by the burglar, and when you fell and stabbed yourself."

"Okay, we'll try a few more times, and I guess we can call Happy if he doesn't answer."

"That sounds good, Peter. Calling Mr. Stark."

There was still no answer, not even a voicemail option, by the time Peter flopped onto the roof, taking his mask off. He turned onto his left side; he figured if he stopped moving, the wound should hopefully at least stop bleeding. He was able to feel the blood dripping now, down to his left shoulder and onto the gravel roof that was supporting his weight, the rocks sticking to the sweat covering his face and the blood now coating his left neck and shoulder.

His eyesight was blurrying, in and out, trying to focus; it reminded him of his pre-superpowered eyesight days.

Karen's voice rang through his head, "calling Happy Hogan."

Peter weakly nodded assent.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed until Happy's annoyed voice.

"Peter, what's up? I'm in the middle of something."

Peter took a shaky breath, and mustered up the energy to speak.

"I kinda got hurt. I'm sorry."

Happy paused, and for a moment Peter feared that Happy wasn't going to believe him and would hang up.

"How hurt?" Peter released his breath, now that he had someone to help. He sat up, looking around at the skyline and assessing his arm. It didn't seem to be bleeding as much as it was earlier.

"I need help, I just got stabbed in my shoulder."

Happy drew in a sharp breath. "Did you take the knife out?"

"No. Should I?"

"No no, the doctor here will deal with it. Can you meet us at the tower?"

Peter stood up slowly, groaning, testing his ability. "I think so?"

Happy paused again, and hummed. "Hmmm, no. I can pick you up, where are you now?

Peter looked around, and told him his location. "But what about the doctors?"

"What about them?" Peter heard a car door slam over the phone.

"I mean... are they okay... treating me?"

Happy sighed again. "Yeah, Tony's got doctors. Have you spoken to Tony, by any chance?"

"No, he didn't pick up."

"Figured as much. I'll make sure he knows, and I'll see you in about 10 minutes. You think you'll be okay until then?"

"Yes. Thanks Happy."

"Don't mention it. It's part of the job."

Peter climbed down and hid himself down the alley they'd discussed, and waited for Happy.


A/N: I love and appreciate any feedback. This is my first work, and would love to hear your feedback as I move forward!

Stay safe and healthy! Updates soon :)