Chapter Text
“I thought we were over this solo act ‘roo!” Tony scolded Peter with his arms in the air. Peter sat in the back of the quinjet that the non-flyers of the team had rode over to the alert with a medic that Dr. Cho trusted for field assessments checking him over. Peter winced – both from the sound of Tony’s voice bouncing around the enclosed space and from the medic poking the lump on his head – and Tony took a deep breath to force himself to quiet down. “This was a phase you were supposed to have out-grown a long time ago! Why are we regressing?!”
“Tony, please, can you yell at me later? My head feels like it is splitting open,” Peter groaned as he rubbed at his face. While the pain wasn’t bad enough to make Peter felt like he was going to die from it, it was enough that Peter didn’t notice he had called his mentor by his first name.
Concern flashed over Tony’s face. Tony looked over to the medic. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Give it some time and he will,” the medic answered and started to pack up their triage bag they had opened for Peter’s care. “Spidey’s just going to have a killer headache for a while. The lump should be gone by very early morning – if not earlier with his healing. I expect him to be completely fine after a full night of rest to let his body heal itself. If he starts to get dizzy, nauseous, or the headache grows exponentially worse, bring him into the med bay and we’ll put him on concussion observation but I really doubt he has one.”
“What about the alien beam they shot him with?” Harley asked, fretting with his fingers fiddling together.
“Without access to the med bay or knowing what they shot him with, I have very little to go off of,” the medic explained. “From what I can see, it looked like it just powerful enough to knock even our local demi god here down but not much more than that.”
“They didn’t have to bash me over the head with it though,” Peter grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut as a painful pulse of his headache hit him. Patting the side of him, Peter found his mask and pulled on down until his nose so it covered his eyes and ears. “Karen, do your thing.”
“‘No Thoughts, Just Vibes’ protocol: now engaged,” Karen dutifully relayed as she limited the amount of light and sound filtering through the mask.
Tony took a deep breath through his nose and then exhaled as the fight went out of his shoulders. “Fine then. I can wait until morning to read you the riot act.”
“Joy,” Peter grumbled, rubbing at his headache.
The medic pulled out an instant ice pack, popping it before handing it to Peter. “Use this for now. Sorry but I don’t have any pain relievers that would work on you,” the medic apologized.
“Not your fault that a janky radioactive spider bit me and gave me janky powers,” Peter said and took the ice pack. Leaning back, he laid the ice pack over his mask lens where the coolness leaked through the material and sighed as it gave him some relief. “You’re a lifesaver man.”
“Happy to help,” the medic chuckled as they stood up and lifted the strap of their bag onto their shoulder. “If you need another, there should be some in the first aid kit of the quinjet. I’ll be sure to replace any you use.”
Tony’s eyes softened in the corners at his middle child suffering. “You want to go lay down in the suit? I can run black-out protocols for sight and sound.”
“It’s not a sensory overload so that’s not going to help any more than what Karen is already running,” Peter grumbled. Sliding to the side so that he fell down, Peter laid across the bench with his right arm and leg hanging off the edge. His left leg laid stretched out across the bench with his hand holding the ice pack in place. “Ugh, this is the worst.”
“Perhaps I should just skip the lecture and decide this is your punishment,” Tony mused, stroking his chin. “It’s what my old man did for me when I had my first hangover – though, Howard was a shit dad.”
“Tony, it’s not his fault. It’s mine,” Harley tried coming to Peter’s defense. “He tried to stop me but I didn’t listen.”
“Oh ho ho, don’t think you’re not getting a hell of a scolding too,” Tony said as he turned his attention to Harley. While he could hold off his lecture for Peter until the young hero felt better in the morning, the same didn’t have to be said for Harley. “What the hell were you thinking?!”
“I was thinking like a hero!” Harley argued. Peter pulled his eyebrows together in discomfort at the volume.
“You were thinking like a dumbass!” Tony argued before gesturing a hand at Peter. “What would you have done if Peter wasn’t there?! You would have be caught in a dead-in-the-water suit and your little friend could have been hurt or worse!” In the corner of the room, the Iron Lad suit stood empty next to the Iron Man suit.
“Patriot could have held his own if it came to be!” Harley argued back.
“Patriot?” Tony scoffed with a disbelieving look. “Are you trying to form your own Avengers team now or something?”
“The Argonauts are our own team,” Harley sniffed indignantly with his chest puffing out.
“Oh, great, you have a name for your rip-off Avengers team,” Tony snarked with a roll of his eyes. He pinched his nose bridge with his eyes squeezed shut. “How the hell can you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?”
“I wasn’t being stupid!” Harley squawked in anger. “I made a plan and gathered teammates for a mission to stop alien tech from being spread! I didn’t go in alone!”
“You went in with some super solider serum enhanced college student and Peter!” Tony argued. Peter groaned and hunched in on himself. Their voices were like an ice pick to the temple.
“How’d you know about Eli?” Harley asked with narrowed eyes.
“Don’t change the subject,” Tony scoffed and pointed a finger into Harley’s chest. “I gave you that suit so you could join the Avengers in the future, not now. You are not ready for solo missions.”
“I’m ready,” Harley scoffed and pushed Tony’s finger away. “You are just too paranoid to trust me.”
“Look at Peter!” Tony yelled, gesturing a hand to the prone spider-infused young man. “He’s like this precisely because you aren’t ready!”
A pained look took over Harley’s face as he looked at Peter in pain. “I'm sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Harley murmured. “I was just trying to help.”
“No, you were trying to make a name for yourself before you were ready,” Tony said with a stern look. “If you were really trying to help, you would have talked to one of us on the team.”
“But then you adults would have taken over the entire operation!” Harley protested.
“Yes! Because we have experience in this!” Tony argued and Peter winced in pain as it made his headache worse. “Now look what happened! The alien tech is missing, the buyer knows we’re are onto them and Peter got injured!”
“I said I’m sorry about that!” Harley yelled loudly. With that, Peter reached his breaking point.
“Both of you, please!” Peter interrupted and held both hands to the ice pack covering his eyes. Both Tony’s and Harley’s mouths snapped shut as they looked at Peter laying on the bench. “Too loud. My head…”
Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Looking back to Harley, he pointed a finger at his oldest son. “Don’t think this talk is over. We are going to pick this back up when we don’t have a downed spider around us.”
Harley nodded and let his shoulders fall. Tony stepped purposely over to the open space by Peter’s feet and sat down, one hand on Peter’s should ankle as he pulled out his phone. From the bit Harley could see, it was a live reading of Peter’s vitals taken from his suit.
Making his way to Peter’s head, Harley squatted down next to the spider. “I’m sorry again, Pete,” Harley apologized looking crestfallen. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
Peter pulled the ice back down so he could squint at Harley through the lens of his mask. “It’s part of the job description. Though, to be fair, I’m happy that it was me than either of you two.”
“I would be happy if it was none of you,” Tony grumbled under his breath.
There was a clearing of a throat and Harley looked over to see Elijah standing at the top of the ramp. “Is now a good time to offer my own words to Spidey?” Elijah asked.
“C’mon in,” Harley waved Elijah in. He scooted over to allow Elijah some place next to Peter.
Squatting down like Harley, Elijah found himself face-level with Peter. “You okay, Pete?” Elijah asked.
“Eh, not going to die so that’s a positive,” Peter snarked. Even with the pain, his sassiness made its way through.
Elijah nodded his head. “Look, dude, I just wanted to thank you for catching me,” he said. “You could have focused on taking out that Flag Smasher—”
“There was a Flag Smasher?” Tony interrupted as he looked away from his phone but was promptly ignored.
“—but you chose to grab me from hitting the road instead,” Elijah finished. “That was cool of you.”
“Not like it did much to help,” Peter huffed and moved the ice pack onto his forehead. “I still got electrocuted and dropped you.”
“It was the thought that counts,” Elijah chuckled and stood up. “I promise to watch your back like you did mine whenever you need it. Just give me a call and I’ll be there.”
“Which won’t be for a very long time if your grandfather has anything to say about it,” Tony commented and Elijah grimaced.
“I’m going to be in so much trouble when he catches wind of this,” Elijah groaned.
From the bottom of the ramp, Bucky and Sam appeared. They had been working with the rest of the team that showed up to see if they could track the truck and securing the area. Bucky looked up into the Quintjet and narrowed his eyes. “Elijah?” Bucky asked.
“Ah shit, busted,” Elijah grumbled underneath his breath as his shoulders hiked in an attempt to make himself smaller. He had been hiding for the most part since the Avengers had arrived because of two certain members that knew him.
“Elijah Bradley, that better not be you mixed up in this,” Sam said as he stomped over.
“I think this is my queue to go face the music,” Eli winced as he rubbed at the back of his head. “Feel better, Pete. Let’s get together again on non-superhero business.”
“Sounds like a great idea to me,” Peter said with a shaky thumbs-up in the air. Elijah made his way to the bottom of the ramp and directed Bucky and Sam elsewhere to yell at him with a quick explanation of Peter’s state. They had been semi-aware that Peter was hit with something from when they arrived with the others to Peter laid out on the ground in pain.
Harley lightly patted Peter on his shoulder. “I’m going to go see if my help is needed,” Harley said. “I’m getting antsy just sitting around.”
“Don’t go too far, we are going to be leaving soon,” Tony informed him with a swipe of his thumb on his phone to check the internal readings of the Iron Lad suit. Most of the circuits on the left side were shot and he knew he was going to make Harley learn how to fix it as part-punishment and part-learning opportunity.
“Okay,” Harley nodded his head and stood up to also make his way out.
That left Peter and Tony alone in the quinjet’s main area. Peter could hear Steve outside ordering some SHIELD agents around while Clint and Natasha returned from their busted quest of finding the truck. From what he could tell, the truck was long gone even for them.
Peter nudged Tony’s thigh with his foot. “Sorry for worrying you Mr. Stark.”
Tony sighed and put his phone down. “I’m sorry for yelling at you so much, ‘roo,” Tony also apologized. “I just got so worried after seeing the medical alert from Karen and then flying out here to see you on the ground. I think this is a lesson enough for you and me just yelling at you about it would be overkill.”
“Hey, I’m not going to complain about not being yelled out,” Peter chuckled but then winced as his headache decided to make itself known again. “Mr. Stark?”
“Yeah, Pete?”
“That alien tech was new,” Peter told his mentor.
Tony sat up straighter. “How so?”
“It was mixed with earth tech and Karen couldn’t find anything like it in the system,” Peter said. “It should be in tonight’s records if you want to take a look.”
“Good job,” Tony nodded his head and picked up his phone again to go looking through Karen’s recordings. “At least we got this small win.”
“Yaaaay,” Peter said weakly and pulled the ice pack back over his eyes. “Now, can you tell everyone that I’ll be fine in the morning but please don’t talk to me too much for the rest of the night?”
Tony chuckled and patted Peter’s food in sympathy. “Yeah, kid, I got you. Just relax and try to feel better,” Tony said. With a start, Tony remembered something. “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you that both May and your friends got the medical alert and I’m sure they are all waiting to fret over you.”
Peter groaned and dropped his head down.
He really should have just stayed home tonight.