Chapter Seven: In Which Peter Parker Runs Towards Danger (Twice)
The headlines read: "Masked Menace Attacks Manhattan", "Spider-Mess", "Spider-Man Causes Blackout", "WANTED: Spider-Man" and "New York's Pest Problem". The people said: "He's a hero," "He's a criminal," "He saved my life," "I just want to know who he is," and "He's exactly what New York needed."
Whether they hated him or loved him, over the course of a few months, Spider-Man had become positively famous. It had started to go to his head, until Christmas Eve rolled around and Peter Parker realized that between studying for midterms and crime-busting, he hadn't bought anyone any Christmas gifts at all.
"These are all artsy,"Peter complained as they made their second loop around Union Square. "No one in my family is artsy but my Pops, and he thinks modern art is a conspiracy to put five-year-olds in charge of the media. They all like guns and- and- boots."
"I understand completely," Diana replied sympathetically, linking arms with him. "My family likes guns too. Also, leather jackets and storage containers." It was a running joke between them- that Peter's family might just be superheroes, and Diana's might just be the mafia. All completely fiction, though, of course. Still, they'd never actually met each other's parents.
"Maybe I should just get them books," Peter sighed, and turned towards Barnes and Noble. His toes were freezing inside his shoes, and snow had gotten into the gap between his jeans and the tops of his boots.
"Can never go wrong with books," agreed Diana. "Well, actually, you can. A few years ago, my dad bought my mom a book on how to give better fellatio. Needless to say, he slept on the couch all the way through to New Years."
"See, I'd never do that. I like to teach by example," Peter explained, drawing a laugh from her. They entered the warm foyer of the bookstore and sighed in unison as the feeling returned to their extremities in pins and needles.
They stayed there until closing time, curled up next to the radiator with a stack of books on either side. When they were finally kicked out, it was with twenty extra pounds of literature in green plastic bags. "Do you think you could get away for a few minutes tomorrow so I can give you your present?" Diana asked as they trudged towards the train station.
"Yeah, sure. We have a really tight schedule that my Pops makes every year, though, so I'm not sure I'll be able to do anything during the day. How do you feel about waking up really early and being the first person I see on Christmas morning?" He smiled in what he hoped was a charming way.
"How early are we talking?" she wanted to know, but she was already saying yes in the coy tilt of her eyes when she looked up at him. He bent down and kissed her swiftly on the cheek.
"Five am at our halfway point, whaddya say? I promise to bring coffee."
"All right. I like mine black." They kissed once more, and then went their opposite ways. Now all Peter had to do was actually get Diana a present, and that was going to be the most difficult task of all. What did you buy for your girlfriend of two months, anyway? Jewelry? She didn't wear jewelry. Books? Too impersonal. Clothes? Yeah, right.
He walked all the way home in the subzero temperatures thinking about it. The winter sun had set hours ago, and the streets were emptying and the lights brightening as people hurried home to wait for Santa Claus. All the stores were closing up, gates rattling and locks clicking up and down the avenues.
It took two hours to reach Stark Tower, due to a couple of incidents in which Spider-Man had to put down his shopping bags and get his hands dirty. Afterwards, he promised himself that he would never walk home late at night again. "Merry Christmas," he said to one thief, once he had returned the handbag to its rightful owner. "I'm letting you go. If I catch you again, you're screwed. Ten bucks you find coal in your stocking tomorrow, though. Jesus forgives; Santa doesn't."
He would have made it in the nick of time for Avengers family dinner, too, if it weren't for the fire. Somewhere downtown- yes, back in the direction he had come from- flames were licking the stars from the roof of an apartment building. Naturally, it had to be residential, rather than a construction site or empty office building. Peter stashed his things behind a dumpster on 34th Street and pulled his mask on.
The firetrucks arrived at the same time as he. A couple of them cheered for Spider-Man, a couple of them scowled, and then they tucked their personal feelings in their jacket pockets and got down to business.
The fire had begun on the eighteenth floor, near the top of the building, allowing most of the inhabitants to escape unharmed. At this point, no one on the eighteenth story could have survived- every window and hall crawled with white-hot flames, and the two levels above were in danger of collapsing. Spider-Man headed right for the heart of the blaze, kicking in a nineteenth-story window and rolling into someone's living room.
A family of four was huddled in the middle of the carpet, while their father stood with his hands pressed to the door to feel the heat of the air outside. "Time to go," Spidey said, ignoring their shouts of surprise. He scooped up the smallest kid and bent down. "Can you get on my back and hold on?" he asked the older one. "I promise I won't let you fall, no matter what." The girl bit her lip and nodded, climbing onto his back and wrapping her arms around his neck in a chokehold. Spidey stood with a grunt and nodded to the parents. "I'll be back," he said, and swung out of the window.
When he returned, the floor groaned under his entrance, and the woman whimpered. "Take my wife first," said the man, and they exchanged a nod- man-to-man, one might say. As Spider-Man swung from building to ground, building to ground, he prayed for a miracle, because that was really the only thing that would save the people on the top floor. The concrete walls groaned and expanded in the heat, and the crowd of people on the sidewalk grew.
He reached apartment 19E to find an old man standing in front of his door, one hand on the doorknob, despite the warnings that the firemen had been shouting through their megaphones. If there was any fire in the hall, opening the door would release a blast of air that would feed the flames and create an instant fireball.
"Don't do that," Spidey warned, and ran forward to pull the guy away from the door. Either the old man didn't hear him, or he didn't care- either way, Spidey was too late. He ducked into the kitchen just as a maelstrom of fire came howling through the doorway and cut off his escape route.
Sweat ran down his temples and ribs, and he jumped up on the kitchen counter with a rolling pin in his hand and proceeded to smash a hole in the ceiling. He jumped through and into the floor above as fire swallowed the place where had been standing.
A girl perched on the windowsill of unit 20E, arms spread wide and eyes closed. "No!" Spider-Man shouted as she jumped, her nightgown billowing out around her. He jumped after her, grabbed the side of the building, and shot out a web line that caught her around the waist and lowered her to safety, his heart throbbing in his throat.
With an ominous creak, the floor began to buckle. Spider-Man dove in through the neighboring window and began to search the apartment, calling out. Even through the mask, smoke filled his lungs and made his eyes water. He kicked down the wall between two apartments, figuring it was all going to come down anyway, and found three children huddled on a bed looking up at him with wide, fearful eyes.
"Come on," he said. "I'm getting you out of here. Follow me-" he coughed- "okay?" He led them to the window and lowered the first one down, none too slowly, on a web line. Something crashed nearby, and he cursed under his breath. "Contact me with your therapy bills later," he told the other two, and dropped them both out the window. There was no way to secure the other end of his web to something else without slamming them into the wall of the building, so he was forced to support the kids with his wrists until the firemen caught them and set them on the ground.
He ran at the wall, breaking through it with his shoulder. A girl was standing at the window, clutching her dog in her arms while the firemen tried to get their act together and position the trampoline. Spider-Man appeared beside her and poked his head out the window. "Ready?" he yelled.
"Affirmative!" yelled a fireman through his megaphone. "Jump!"
Instead, she threw her damn dog. He barked loudly as he fell two hundred feet to the trampoline and bounced. "Okay, let's go," Spidey said, grabbing her around the waist and jumping out the window just as the building collapsed behind them. Inside, someone screamed, and his heart went cold.
He hadn't saved them all, then.
Once they were both safely on the ground, he stepped back to look at the building. Its tallest wall stood barely twenty feet high now. Nothing but a cockroach could have survived the wreckage. Behind him, a woman screamed and sobbed, on her knees in the middle of the street.
"Spider-Man!" A reporter shoved her microphone into his face. "Spider-Man, can you tell us what-"
He shook his head and took off running, disappearing into the dark streets.
Peter arrived at Christmas dinner an hour late, after washing the soot from his face, throwing up in a trash can, and checking his eighteen missed calls. "I'm sorry," he said as he walked into the dining room and halted conversation. "Um, merry Christmas, everyone."
"You're going to be in big trouble at some point in the near future," Tony told him sternly. "But it's Christmas Eve, so I'll let it slide." Natasha and Clint, who had been away on a three-month assignment, got up to hug him. As the two shyest people at the table, Bruce and Peter exchanged awkward science-bro greetings.
"What were you doing?" Steve asked quietly, leaning against the kitchen counter as Peter washed his hands at the sink.
"Nothing," Peter replied, and coughed harshly, spitting something black into the sink. "I think I'm coming down with something. Um, the trains were delayed. 'Cause of Christmas, I guess. I'm really sorry. I couldn't pick up any of your phone calls 'cause I was underground."
Blue eyes locked on amber, and Peter could taste his secret when he ran his tongue along his teeth. He wanted to say something, he really did- he rubbed the back of his neck, accidentally touching a burn, and hissed in pain. "I'm really sore" was his excuse when Steve looked at him funny. "Let's go eat, all right?" Steve smiled and tweaked Peter's nose, then led him back into the dining room.
"I've just received intel that the vigilante known as 'Spider-Man' stopped a robbery and saved several people from a burning building earlier this night," Natasha said, sounding impressed.
"'Just received intel'?" Clint snorted. "Natasha, you read that on CNN from your phone."
"Real heroes don't take holidays, I guess." Bruce tipped his head back and down an entire glass of wine without pausing to breathe. Tony raised an eyebrow at him, and then refilled his glass.
"I received intel from CNN!"
"Heroes?" Tony scoffed. "You think Spider-Man is a hero? He's just some acrobat who runs around helping old ladies cross the street."
"Sounds like the definition of a hero to me," Steve replied, passing the salt to Peter.
"Well, okay- and the real heroes are your neighborhood firemen and policemen, I know. But it's not like he's saved the world several times or invented a new source of clean and theoretically infinite energy," Tony retorted huffily.
"Stop being jealous," Steve told his husband in an irritatingly unruffled way. "I think Spider-Man would make a good Avenger. He's obviously smart and dedicated to the people. He has superior strength and reflexes, and gets around pretty quick too."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Tony held up his hands. "Now we're inviting him into the Avengers?"
"I didn't say that. Obviously he hasn't been tested enough yet, and we don't even know who he really is or how to find him-"
"Spider-signal?" Clint suggested.
"- so no, but I'm just saying that I admire him. It's hard to be a solo hero. I hope nothing happens to him, that's all. And maybe, if he's still around in the future, he will be an Avenger."
"I, for one, wouldn't mind having the Spider-Man on my side," Bruce commented, salting his potatoes and deliberately avoiding Tony's accusing eyes.
"He'd be a valuable asset in the field, but I'd need to know who he really is," Natasha decided. "Otherwise, how would we know we could trust him? We still wouldn't know for sure," she added, "but it would be better if we knew what his motives were. It seems unlikely, but he could be a really determined baddie posing as a hero in order to infiltrate us."
"Maybe he's just a nice guy in a mask," put in Peter.
"Or that," Natasha agreed without conviction.
"Whatever," Tony grumbled. "But if you ask me, he'd crumble in a second under real pressure."
Peter stayed up all night wrapping presents and trying to figure out what he could give Diana. At four am, he showered, brushed his teeth, pulled on his Spider-Man suit (it allowed him to be prepared at all times and offered extra warmth!), put on his clothes, and then brushed his teeth again.
Before he left, he made two cups of coffee and sealed them in thermoses. The loud gurgling of the coffee machine made him wince, but his parents' door stayed firmly closed. Beneath the Christmas tree were at least a dozen presents of varying shapes and sizes, including the ones he had placed there at three in the morning.
He tiptoed out of the house at half past four, simultaneously sleepy and hyper from his all-nighter. Rather than wait thirty minutes for the next train or bus, he rode his bike to the halfway point on 25th Street. Diana met him on the corner, her cheeks flushed with cold.
"Merry Christmas," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. He brushed her hair away from her face, leaned down and kissed her.
"Merry Christmas," he smiled, and handed her one of the thermoses. She smiled shyly back at him and pressed a small box covered in reindeer wrapping paper into his hand. Before he could figure out how to tell her that he hadn't gotten her anything, Manhattan interrupted.
The ground rippled beneath them, tossing them into one another, and the air was ripped apart by a sonic wave so loud that it rendered them instantly deaf. The concrete bucked and cracked beneath them, and windows shattered all around. Glass rained down, flashing rainbows through the pre-dawn dark. When Peter pressed his hands to his ears, they came away bloody.
"Are you okay?" he asked Diana, although he couldn't hear his own voice. She shook her head and rubbed at a cut on the bridge on her nose. He pulled her hand away and said, "Don't touch it." They stood on rubbery legs, leaning against each other and trying to clear the ringing from their heads.
A moment later, they saw it: the Empire State Building had changed from Christmas colors to a sickly green, and hovering beside it was a ship emblazoned with the word HYDRA.
Pulling out his phone, Peter typed, I have to go. Get home. Get out of the city if you can. Stay safe. He showed the text to her, and she set her jaw and nodded. The last time he saw her, her pupils were dilated in fear, and she stood on the corner and blew him a kiss as he sprinted towards the Empire State Building.