Chapter Text
They had to force the jet into a crash landing a few blocks away from the base of the Tower, because the Chitauri took out one of their wings and they had to either end up in the street or in the side of a high-rise.
Natasha may not have been a woman easily caught off guard, but as she ran out the back of the plane and started making her way back towards the Tower, she was certainly disturbed by how quickly the city had folded into chaos.
There was already rubble. They had only just begun and there was already rubble, already people running for their lives, already smashed cars and shattered glass and emergency vehicles filled with first responders who had never been trained for a threat of this sort.
She had made it less than a block with Steve and Clint close on her tail when a rumbling, groaning sound echoed down the street, stopping the three of them in their tracks.
“Uh, hey, guys?”
“Yes, Spider-Man?” Steve responded immediately to the trepidation in Peter’s voice on their comm channel.
“We’ve got a big boy incoming,” Peter said uncertainly.
“What?” Clint questioned, even as he readied an arrow.
“Uh. You’ll know when you see it.”
And as the rumbling grew closer and a loud screeching sound took its place, a monster like none Natasha had ever even imagined came flying down out of the wormhole and into their fight. Now, Natasha had fought a lot of monsters in her day, she had even played the part of the monster once or twice, but as she stood there, staring down some sort of fucking space whale with teeth the size of a Jeep, she had to steady herself.
“This oughta be fun,” she said.
They all knew it was very much not going to be any fun.
***
“Stark are you seeing this?”
“Seeing it, Cap,” Tony responded as he flew towards rather than away from the giant armored… worm? Whale? Alien. Giant armored alien that had joined the party. “Still working on believing it though.”
“Maybe we all died in the explosion and this is the afterlife,” Peter chimed in. “Which would suck because my Rabbi super never mentioned this.”
“Yeah, that’s why that would suck,” Tony deadpanned. “Does anyone have eyes on Banner? Has he shown up yet?”
“Banner?” Steven asked. “What are you--”
“Nevermind,” Tony brushed it off. Peter wasn’t the only one with a good gut worth trusting, but that didn’t mean they had to waste time talking about it. “Just keep me posted.”
***
“Hey,” Peter called into his comms as he used the momentum of swinging around a corner to kick an alien in the head. “Has anyone checked on Thor?”
“He was still up at the Tower when I left,” Tony replied. “You wanna drop in on him?”
“Yeah,” Peter dropped to a crouch on the roof of one of the shorter buildings surrounding the Tower and looked up. “It’s just gonna take me a minute to get up there.”
It was going to take him more than a minute to get up there, because the Tower was really very absurdly tall, but Peter kept thinking about how Thor had been there when he needed him twice over during the fight for the helicarrier, and felt like even a god might need backup when taking on another god.
Peter was planning his path of ascent when he heard the distant sound of repulsors and Tony’s voice in his ear saying, “Look sharp, Spidey, and I’ll give you a lift.”
His head whipped around to see Tony racing towards him, and Peter understood the offer just at the last possible moment, shooting out a web and latching onto Tony’s boot, holding on with both hands as Tony shot the both of them straight up the side of the Tower at speeds that Peter had only ever experienced in an arcing motion with his webs.
Peter let out a string of curses and incoherent screams, feeling like he was hanging off the back of a rocket ship until they reached the top and he was free to let go, rolling over himself a couple of times as he landed on Tony’s launch pad with a harsh exhale of breath.
“You good?” Tony asked, even as he was already zooming away towards the Big Boy, probably in search of a weak point to hit.
“We are never doing that again,” Peter groaned as he pushed himself to his feet.
As he looked down to the penthouse balcony, Peter could see that Thor and Loki were already there having a heated conversation. It didn’t appear to have gotten physical yet, but it looked to be just about there as he tuned his hearing in to listen to them.
“You think this madness will end with your rule?” Thor asked, fire in his voice as he held his hammer-wielding arm up against Loki’s throat.
“It’s too late,” Loki was breathing heavily and Peter was sneaking around behind him, not wanting to give away his chance at a surprise attack if it was necessary. “It’s too late to stop it.”
“No,” Thor responded, hope growing in his voice. “We can. Together.”
Not even Peter, with his enhanced vision, saw the knife in Loki’s hand until it was buried in Thor’s side, but the moment that he saw Thor on his knees, Peter was jumping from his perch and tackling Loki to the ground.
Peter tried to hold him down long enough to web him to the floor, but Loki got the sceptre between them and pointed it at Peter’s chest, forcing him to stumble backwards just enough to get out of his hold.
Thor grabbed Loki and dragged him to his feet, but Loki nimbly spun around and let himself fall off the ledge, forcing Thor to either let go or fall with him. Peter shot out a web to try and catch him, but Loki was already speeding away on one of the Chitauri hovercrafts, dodging Peter’s aim.
Peter stayed on his stomach at the edge of the balcony for a moment, feeling a little stupid that they couldn’t keep the slippery bastard in one place with the both of them and then flatly said, “Fuck, I’m glad I’m an only child.”
He looked up at where Thor stood beside him. “No offense.”
Thor just shrugged. “None taken,” he said. “You have a point.”
***
It would seem that a number of people in May Parker’s building had the idea to wait out the chaos in the basement laundry room, because the three of them found a young couple down there with an infant and a toddler when May finally managed to drag them away from the television.
May had brought Ben’s old baseball bat that she usually kept by her bed in case of intruders and Ned had his laptop hooked up to the super’s wi-fi so they could keep updated on what was going on outside and Michelle had the nervous sweats like she never had before.
Marjorie and Cam were very sweet 30-somethings and their children were both quiet and well-behaved, but Michelle sort of wished they weren’t there so she could be vocally upset every time a news camera or cell phone camera caught Spider-Man hanging off of one of those alien vehicles or falling a bit too long before he caught himself with a web.
“I can’t just sit here,” Michelle said, standing from where she’d been huddled next to Ned on top of a drier. “I have to do something.”
“What are you gonna do?” Ned asked. “Really. What is your plan?”
Michelle crossed her arms over her chest tight enough that she could feel it in her shoulder blades and thought about it. She thought about all the people out there and she thought about the group of superheroes that were trying to help them but were a little too preoccupied with staving on the incoming army to offer any personal attention to.
She thought about Peter Parker, who had left his suit at home when he went to take the SATs and then came across an apartment fire on his way home-- who still helped drag people away to the other side of the street even though he couldn’t go inside.
“I’m gonna help,” Michelle said as she grabbed Ben Parker’s baseball bat and walked up the stairs.
***
“Hey!” Peter said as he swung past a group of police setting up a perimeter. “Whoever got the police to cooperate-- you gotta teach me the trick!”
“Sure thing, son,” Steve replied.
“Oh, nevermind,” Peter frowned. “I didn’t realize the trick was literally being Captain America.”
***
Ned and Michelle hurried down the street, gathering people cowering behind overturned cars and in alleys that may have felt safer but really weren’t with the way the sides of buildings were getting knocked out.
The two of them led civilians into subway stations so they would be underground and out of the line of fire, they handed lost children over to firefighters or paramedics, they kept an eye out for danger as they got closer and closer to the heart of the fight.
***
Fighting alongside Clint felt natural, it even felt comfortable if any sort of fighting could really feel comfortable, but still they were starting to get fatigued and the army spilling through the hole in the sky was showing no signs of slowing.
Natasha kicked a Chitauri in the center of its chest and set it flying backwards into the unforgiving surface of a car just as lightning struck, bringing with it Thor landing beside them moments later.
He slammed his hammer into one of the Chitauri’s helmets and sent it flying, and then out of nowhere Peter dropped from the sky as well, flipping to a crouch and sweeping his leg under one of the alien’s to give Steve the opening he needed to take it out.
“What’s the story from upstairs?” Steve asked the newcomers, now that they had a minor break in the wave of assailants.
“The power surrounding the Cube is impenetrable,” Thor explained.
“Thor’s right,” Tony came on through the comms. “We gotta deal with these guys.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing,” Peter said as he refilled the web shooter cartridges at his wrists.
“How do we do this?” Natasha asked.
Steve opened his mouth to speak but Peter pointed a finger at him.
“Just warning you, if you say as a team I’m gonna laugh in your face,” he said. “Not because I don’t agree, but because there are aliens invading New York and I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“Join the club,” Clint chimed in flatly.
The way Steve looked between the two of them had the faint hint of amusement to it, but he ignored the opportunity to join in the banter. At least for now.
“Loki’s gonna keep this fight focused on us,” he said instead, which Natasha thought was definitely not what he was going to say pre-interruption. “That’s what we need to happen, because without him these things could run wild...”
Steve kept talking, but Natasha’s focus was pulled away, to the sound of a puttering motorcycle as it came down the empty, ravaged street towards them. There was relief to seeing Bruce Banner in that moment, and also guilt that they had failed him, that she had made him a promise in a second of fleeting desperation and broken that promise almost immediately.
Breaking promises was one of the key facets of spy work, but as Bruce was changing in that crowded space below the lab Natasha had actually meant what she said. And she had failed him.
“Doc,” Peter was the first one to breathe out, the first one to take hurried steps to meet where Bruce was dismounting his motorcycle, and Natasha realized that the kid was probably feeling a bit of guilt himself. Maybe with less intensity though, having been more accustomed to the feeling than her. Not because he had earned it, but because his heart was just that big. “Doctor Banner, are you okay?”
“I should be asking you that, I think,” Bruce replied in all his rumpled glory as he looked at the lot of them, at the disaster zone the city had become in his absence.
“You didn’t hurt anyone,” Peter assured him, quieter than the front he had been putting up all day, the front he had doubled down on after Coulson’s death.
Bruce didn’t vocalize his gratitude for that information, but he nodded at Peter in such a way that it was clear.
“So,” he said instead, motioning half-heartedly to the chaos. “This is all pretty horrible.”
“We could use a hand,” Natasha said, more of a suggestion, even a plea, than a statement.
“Is that Banner?” Tony spoke up over comms, the only one not physically present for this conversation.
“Yeah,” Steve replied. “We got him.”
“Then tell him to suit up,” Tony said. “I’m bringing the party to you.”
Natasha looked up as Iron Man swung around the corner, speeding towards them with a direction and determination that hadn’t been there even a year ago when she had first met the man. Following him was a sight even more ridiculous-- the big boy, as Peter had deemed it and a moniker he seemed adamant to hang onto, was chasing Tony down.
“I dunno what parties were like in your hay day, old man,” Peter said as his knees flexed and his fingers pressed down gently on his web shooters. “But this is not it.”
Natasha snorted, which was the second most surprising thing going on in the current moment, but she sobered herself as they all settled into fighting stances, preparing for the worst as it barreled straight towards them.
“Doctor Banner,” Steve said, even as Bruce was already stepping towards the fight. “Now might be a really good time to get angry.”
“That’s my secret, Cap,” Bruce smirked at him over his shoulder. “I’m always angry.”
A number of things happened all at once then: the Hulk made one hell of an appearance, nailing the big boy right in the nose; Peter let out a delighted whoop as he swung out of the way, saying something that sounded an awful lot like that’s the coolest thing anyone’s ever said; Tony blasted the thing, right at its weakest point and sent it collapsing to the ground; and Natasha realized something.
She was a part of a team.
***
The fight kept going, even after Hulk showed up and gave them the show of a lifetime.
Even as Thor blasted them with lightning as they came through the portal, even as Clint picked them off one by one from the rooftops, even as Tony shot them down with repulsor beams and heat-seeking missiles and Steve and Natasha got their hands dirty on the ground, the flow of Chitauri wasn’t letting up.
Peter was bruised in ways he had never been before, and he could feel his stamina fading with every new threat he had to take on. Not to mention the fact that he was going to start running low on web-fluid soon and then all he’d have left were the already scraped and beaten limbs on his body.
He landed next to Natasha as she shot down a Chitauri with one of their own guns, both of them breathing heavily and visibly showing the effort in all of their movements-- a rarity for the two most genuinely acrobatic of the group.
“None of this is gonna matter if we don’t get that portal shut,” she said as Peter let his hands fall to his knees so he could catch his breath.
“It’s pure energy,” he shook his head. “No amount of fucking firepower is gonna take that thing out.”
He didn’t notice it at first when a phone started ringing, because there was too much going on for it to really cut through the rest of the noise, but after a moment he heard it, and he pushed himself upright to share a look with Natasha before she pulled the cell phone off her belt and answered.
“Hello?” she said with obvious bafflement that didn’t really fit in Peter’s previous experiences with Natasha’s poker face. He supposed they were all a little too preoccupied to be fitting anyone’s perceptions of them at that point, though. “It’s… for you,” she held the phone out to Peter.
He looked at her, he looked at the phone, he looked around at the brief break in combat they were experiencing, and then he took the offered phone.
“Hello?”
“You gotta shut down that fucking wormhole nonsense.”
“MJ?”
“We’ve been able to get the people on the outskirts of Midtown into basements and subways,” she continued frantically. “But there are too many civilians still inside buildings right around the Tower.”
“I’m sorry, do you know all this because you’re watching it happen on TV safely from a hotel room in DC?” Peter’s heart rate picked up for a number of reasons at the sound of her voice.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” she deadpanned.
“This is the opposite of what I asked you to do, Michelle!” Peter exclaimed with indignation, barely even noticing Natasha’s eyes on him anymore.
“Peter, focus,” Michelle said with all the authority of being one of the few people he listened to indiscriminately. “How are you going to shut it down?”
He exhaled harshly. “I don’t know. I really-- I mean, there’s no gun, no bomb that can take that thing out.”
“So don’t use a gun or a bomb,” she responded, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it was, actually. “You’re a scientist and an engineer. Get up there and figure it out.”
Peter knew it was a little more complicated than that, he knew there wasn’t just going to be a way to jerry-rig the thing and turn it off, but Michelle did have a point. He hadn’t even considered his own brain as a way to find the solution here, but she had, with all that faith she had in him despite his feeling like he’d never earned it.
“Okay,” he said simply, because it was worth a shot at least. It was worth a shot because they were running out of options. “Yeah, alright.”
“Also,” she continued, barreling forward in a way that felt natural and new at the same time. “Ned told me you were going to ask me out and the answer is yes, so don’t die before you can buy me dinner, okay?”
His breath hitched and his heart stuttered and he didn’t have time to really jump for joy the way he wanted to in that beat of disbelief, but he did manage to say, “I was… I was actually gonna take you to the movies? That fancy theater by the fancy Thai place.”
“Oh,” all the bravado left her voice, ramping up the same awkward delight that Peter felt. “That’s good too. I mean, if it hasn’t been blown up.”
“Spider-Man,” Natasha’s voice cut into the warm little bubble of a world Peter had fallen into. “We gotta go.”
“Right,” he knocked himself back to reality. “Stay safe, Em. I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”
“Go get ‘em, Tiger.”
He hung up the phone and tossed it back to Natasha.
“We need to get back to the Tower,” she said and Peter nodded.
“On it,” he said, already picking her up and swinging away even as she protested because Peter was ready to end this thing so he could finally, finally go on a movie date with the one and only Michelle Jones.
***
By the time they made it to the top of the Tower, Peter could tell Natasha was thoroughly over his way of transportation. Especially when she shoved him away from her upon landing and stumbled to regain her balance on the gravel rooftop beside the rigged-up Tesseract.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” he said to her.
“Just-- take a look at this thing, it’s fine,” she brushed him off.
Peter nodded, walking over to the base of the portal and knowing that it was far beyond his wheelhouse just at a cursory glance. He was too tired for this, too out of his element, too worried about the fact that his people were putting themselves in harm’s way instead of keeping themselves safe like he had asked--
“Selvig?”
Natasha’s voice startled him out of his spiral and he turned around to see her gaping at the man in question as he pushed himself to his feet on the other end of the roof. Peter grounded himself, he prepared himself to fight, he asked, “Is he…?”
“No,” Natasha, who was closer responded certainly. “His eyes are back to normal.”
“The scepter,” Selvig said, looking up at the portal in horror and then back to them. “Loki’s scepter-- the energy. It’s-- God, look at this,” he was on the verge of breaking it seemed, just at the sight of what he had done.
“It’s not your fault,” Natasha said to him gently while Peter stood back and let her handle this one. “You couldn’t fight it.”
Selvig met her eye. “I think I might have, actually,” he said, to both of their surprise. “I built in a safety to cut the power source.”
“Loki’s scepter,” Peter reiterated, understanding overcoming him.
“It might be able to close the portal,” Selvig confirmed.
Hope bloomed in Peter’s overworked lungs.
“Well, let’s find the fucker.”
***
Tony flew straight into the mouth of a giant worm alien and blew it up from the inside out, because creativity had always been his strong suit, and forethought had always liked to stay on the backburner.
He was taking a breather on the comfort of the cracked concrete sidewalk, when a new voice joined in on his communicator.
“Stark,” Fury said. “You have a missile headed straight for the city.”
“How long?” Tony asked as he stood up and blasted a Chitauri’s head off all in the same motion.
“Three minutes, max,” Fury responded. “The payload will wipe out Midtown.”
And wasn’t that a treat to hear, Tony thought, as he had Jarvis put all of their power into the thrusters and flew away from the invasion and towards a more homegrown threat.
***
The scepter, as it turned out, had been left just lying around after Loki had an apparent run-in with Hulk, and Peter was able to web it up to them from a lower balcony with ease.
Natasha took ahold of it and, with Selvig’s direction, began pushing it through the energy field and towards the center of the device-- the Cube.
“You got it?” Peter asked her, standing just to her side in case the force got a little too strong and they needed an extra set of hands on it.
“Yeah,” she nodded, certain and hopeful but careful all the same.
“We can close it,” Peter said into his comm. “Does anybody copy?”
“Do it!” Steve’s voice was the first to hit his ears, followed quickly by Tony’s.
“No, wait,” he said.
“Tony?”
“I’ve got a nuke coming in. It’s got less than a minute ‘til it blows.”
Peter’s heart dropped into his gut.
All of this work, all of this fighting, all of this searching until they stumbled upon a solution and still there was more for them to survive? Who would fire a nuke at an island already being ravaged and proving its audacity in response?
Who had decided that they were not worth saving?
“Can we redirect it?” Natasha asked, holding the scepter steady where it was.
“No,” Tony said. “But I know just where to put it.”
It took Peter all of four and a half seconds to figure out what his plan was, but at the end of that problem solving, he felt very much like he might throw up.
“Absolutely not,” he said with more confidence than he was feeling. “Tony-- Don’t you fucking dare,” he hopped up onto the ledge of the roof and saw the shape of a missile, balanced on top of an armored man’s back as it raced towards them.
“Kid, it’s gonna be okay.”
He sounded too resigned for Peter’s liking. He sounded too prepared for an inevitable that Peter refused to so much as entertain.
“There’s another way,” he insisted, voice breaking down the center like the rest of him. “There’s gotta be another way--”
“Stark,” Steven cut him off. “You know this is a one-way trip?”
“Hey! No, we’re not encouraging this!” Peter yelled into his comm, not taking his eyes off of Tony as he got nearer and nearer to them. Logically he knew Tony’s plan was already in motion at this point, that there was no stopping it or him, but they had already lost too much in one day and Peter would not stand any more of it. In fact, he wasn’t sure how he could.
“I’ve been thinking, Underoos,” Tony said with a casual tone that could only be fabricated by a man on the brink. “You really should take your job back up at SI, y’know? Not to pressure you, but we could use your brain in R&D and Pepper… Pep could really use the help--”
“Shut up,” Peter let out a ragged breath, tears threatening to make an appearance because it sounded too much like a goodbye, too much like take care of things when I’m gone.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Tony said one more time before he and the missile were zooming up the side of the Tower and right past Peter as it flew directly up, up, up alongside the beam of blue energy and straight into the hole in the sky.
Peter stared up at it, the fear of the day finally all compounding right on top of itself a dozen times over and making him implode from the inside out. His breath came too quick and his hands were trembling and Tony had disappeared from sight but he couldn’t take his eyes off of where he had just been.
He could hear the Chitauri collapsing all across the city, could see the giants tumble to the ground as they all seemed to have their strings cut, but still he didn’t look away, waiting for Tony to fly back out and make a joke about marionettes and tease Peter for getting so emotional about the whole thing.
A beat passed. And another.
“Give him more time,” Peter muttered. “He’ll be right back.”
“Close it,” Steve said, resigned and defeated despite the clear win.
“No,” Peter fought back with intensity. “Give him a minute.”
But he heard shifting behind him, energy spurting, and turned to see Natasha pressing the scepter forward.
“No!” he lunged towards her because he couldn’t lose Tony-- he couldn’t keep losing people, he really couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t--
“Peter, we have to,” she said, pulling the sceptre out of his too-weak grasp. “The debris will come back through.”
And Peter knew that she was right, so even as he protested he let her shove the tip of the sceptre into the center of the Tesseract, staring back up at the portal as it began to shrink in on itself.
The beam of light collapsed back into the device and the wormhole rippled around the edges and Peter didn’t even really have any conscious thought except sudden and overwhelming grief for an endless passing moment until…
“That’s more like it,” Natasha said, smile in her voice as they watched a body come falling through the portal at the last possible moment.
“Motherfucker,” Peter breathed out in shaky relief, relishing in it right up until he realized that Tony wasn’t activating his thrusters.
He was still falling.
“Motherfucker,” he repeated, stepping closer to the edge, readying a path in his mind that might make it possible for him to catch the man without sending them both hurtling towards the ground, and was about to leap for it despite the risks when Hulk appeared out of seemingly nowhere and caught him.
Just caught him like it was nothing and slowed their descent along the side of an adjacent tower so their impact when they hit the street was lessened.
Peter was flying from the top of the Tower and swinging towards the ground before they had even finished their sliding landing.
“Tony!” he called as he stumbled to his feet out of both urgency and exhaustion in equal measure. “Tony!”
***
When he opened his eyes, feeling like a piece of well-tenderized steak, Tony was met with a handful of concerned faces and a Spider-Man mask.
“What just happened?” he asked, catching his breath as he looked up past Peter to see Steve and Thor and a roaring Hulk. “Christ.”
He felt Peter fiddling with the edges of the arc reactor, presumably making sure it hadn’t come loose or wasn’t malfunctioning at all, but met Steve’s gaze first.
“We won,” the Captain said, as though even he wasn’t sure whether he should believe it or not.
“You need to have Jarvis run diagnostics on this,” Peter said without looking up from the light in Tony’s chest, but suddenly Tony was on the verge of bubbling laughter, a grin tugging at his lips.
“Kid.”
“A fall like that could have knocked something loose--”
“Kid.”
“And what about your heart-- Is your heart--”
“Hey, Doogie,” he cut Peter off with a bit more force to get him to look him in the eye. “We won.”
Peter took a deep breath, sitting back on his heels and seeming to absorb it, slowly but surely. He was probably in a little bit of shock.
They were all probably in a little bit of shock.
“Told you it’d be fine,” Tony continued with a grunt as he tried to push himself up to his elbows and get his bearings after being in space and then flung through the air.
“Fuck you,” Peter shoved at his shoulder none too gently, and Tony heard a crack in his voice that sat heavy on his heart. “You scared the shit outta me.”
“I’m gonna make it up to you,” Tony replied, a bit more of his usual bravado coming back with every word. “You ever tried shawarma?”
“Shawarma?” Peter questioned while Steve snorted out a laugh beside him.
“Yeah, there’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here,” Tony said. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”
“I think it’s like doner kebab,” Peter said, letting himself get dragged out of his own head, much to Tony’s gratitude. He knew it could be hard to get the kid out of there, especially after something like this. “There’s a great kebab place in Queens that we go to sometimes.”
“We are not finished yet, my friends,” Thor reminded them, but even he carried the hint of a smile on his face.
“Yeah, but,” Tony said flatly. “Shawarma after?”
***
Tracking down and arresting a Hulk-bloodied Loki was the easiest thing they had done all day, except for the fact that they were all dead on their feet and in need of some serious calorie replacement after the physical ordeal they had been through.
(If Peter webbed up his mouth, crouched down in front of him, and calmly informed him that even Spider-Man's no-kill policy had its limits, no one commented on it. If he grabbed Loki by the jaw and made sure he remembered Phil Coulson's name, no one commented on that either.)
Peter and Tony tracked down proper cases to lock up the Tesseract and scepter so they could safely hand them over to Thor and then the whole group of them made their way down to the lobby of the Tower.
“Are you sure you don’t need medical?” Peter asked, walking side-by-side with Tony towards the front entrance.
“Jarvis signed off on it,” Tony tapped at the reactor in his chest. Peter was kind of jealous that he had been able to take off his suit and just wear regular clothes in this moment. “You watched Jarvis sign off on it.”
“Okay, I’m just saying--”
“Spider-Man!”
His head shot towards her voice, hurrying forward as she tried to push her way through a group of Shield agents. And was she carrying a baseball bat?
“Ma’am, you have to take a step back--”
“Get out of my way--”
“Hey, hey, it’s fine,” Peter rushed into the mess. “She’s fine, she can be here-- Oof!”
The moment Michelle had an opening through the people she had her arms flung around his neck and her chin hooked over his shoulder in a tight, desperate sort of embrace.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Peter assured her with his arms around her middle. “Are you okay?”
Michelle pulled away and held a hand at the nape of his neck, her hand carrying the bat hanging down at her side as Peter gripped her waist. She studied him, as though trying to see through the mask for a moment and he let her, feeling with his senses as the Shield agents left but the Avengers watched curiously from the other end of the lobby.
He didn’t particularly care at the moment.
“I’m okay,” she told him quietly. “I… I was scared, but I’m okay.”
“May and Ned?” he asked, almost afraid to, but knowing she would have led with that if they were hurt.
“They’re safe,” she nodded. “Helping people find their way home. May was basically running a crisis center out of your laundry room there for a minute,” she grinned at him.
“Of course she was,” Peter laughed before catching sight of the baseball bat once more. “Can I ask what that’s all about?”
Michelle held it up and shrugged slightly. “Just in case?” she said with an uncertain lilt to her voice. “I dunno. I panicked.”
Peter gaped at her. “Were you planning to take on an alien army with-- I’m sorry, is that Ben’s bat? That thing’s like twenty years old, Em!”
“Spidey.”
“No, if you get to be mad at me when I’m reckless then I get to be mad at you--”
“Spider-Man.”
“It’s really only fair when you think about it. It’s really--”
Michelle dropped the bat with an echoing clatter in the nearly-empty lobby, took his face in both hands, and kissed him right over where his mouth was beneath his grimy, dirty mask. Quick and closed mouthed and stunning in every sense of the word.
Somebody catcalled them from behind him and somebody whistled, but Peter Parker only had eyes for her as she pulled away and looked him right in the whites of his eye lenses.
“You kissed me,” he murmured, all full of awe for her. Always, but especially now.
“Yeah,” she breathed.
“In front of the Avengers,” he pointed out, just to watch the blush blooming up her neck grow.
“Oops?” she grimaced.
“Nah, I don’t care,” he laughed brightly. “I really like you, MJ.”
“I know,” she grinned. “I really like you too.”
Peter was beaming at the way her eyes shined and even Tony’s call of, “Hey love birds, it’s chow time! You coming?” wasn’t enough to ruin the moment for him.
“We were thinking shawarma,” he said to Michelle. “You wanna have dinner with us?”
She visibly balked at him, glancing over his shoulder at the group of extraordinary people that had just saved the world, and then shook off her disbelief.
“Screw it,” she said, picking back up the bat in one hand and taking Peter’s with the other. “Why not?”
“This doesn’t count as that date you already agreed to, by the way,” he insisted as they followed the team out of the building.
“Of course not,” she chuckled.
“Because I am gonna take you to the movies.”
Michelle made a face at him. “I think that theater got blown up,” she told him sheepishly. “I passed it on my way here.”
“What?” Peter’s shoulders dropped. “No way, I already bought tickets!”
“You bought tickets?” she looked at him with soft eyes.
“The Agnes Varda film festival.”
“I love Agnes Varda,” she breathed.
“I know you love Agnes Varda,” he said, before raising his voice at the group in front of them. “Whichever one of you blew up the theater on 6th owes me fifty bucks!”
Michelle laughed over a chorus of wasn’t me!
It was the only sound that mattered.
***
They all liked Michelle more than they liked him.
It was exactly as things should have been.
***
Six days later, the city was still in shambles, but they finally had their feet underneath them enough to start rebuilding.
Thor was back on Asgard, holding his brother accountable for what he’d done in whatever way their homeworld found fit, and the rest of them were getting settled into a new world where there were threats waiting in the wings that they did not yet know how to handle.
Tony spent a great deal of time with Pepper upon her arrival home. The minute that airports got back up and running she was flying back to him and he had her in his arms as soon as humanly possible. He kissed her hard and breathed her in and let her reprimand him about his recklessness until she got it out of her system and was able to just hang onto him, remind herself that he was okay.
That they had made it out alive, yet again.
They were up in the penthouse, a few of the windows boarded up from their run in with a Hulk, looking at the plans Tony had been working on for the remodel of their half-destroyed home. The holographic Tower stood tall on the desk in front of them and Pepper wrapped an arm around his waist before she said, “Remember a few months ago when you suggested a vacation?”
Tony craned his neck to look at her where she was leaning into his side.
“Yeah,” he responded softly. “You said there was too much work to do with the company.”
“I think I might be changing my mind,” Pepper rested her head on his shoulder and poked at the hologram, moving a few things around.
“I can get on board with that,” Tony kissed the top of her head. “We should probably stick around for a couple of weeks to make sure everything’s in order for the rebuild efforts but-- the place in Malibu is empty.”
Pepper hummed in agreement. “The beach sounds lovely.”
“Then the beach you’ll get,” he promised, relishing in the quiet for a beat before finding himself unable to keep from asking, “Why the change in heart?”
Pepper pulled away enough to look him in the eye, serious and a little bit scared but so full of love.
“I thought you were dead,” she said with a melancholy, aching sort of smile. “And I know you’re okay this time but… You’re not done yet either, are you?”
Tony couldn’t lie to her. Not just because she would be able to read the dishonesty on his face in a heartbeat, but also because he simply didn’t want to. He was realizing, with passing time and constant change that all he wanted to do was keep her safe and make her happy.
But this was part of that. The not stopping was part of that.
And so he said, “No. I don’t think I can be,” and he kissed her gently on the lips when she nodded with that same ongoing fear in her eyes.
They just stood there for a moment, looking over their little empire, leaning into each other’s warmth, until Jarvis very politely spoke up.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Sir, but you have a visitor on the balcony.”
Pepper laughed softly. “Let him in, Jarvis.”
“Are you allowed to do that?” Tony looked at her as she stepped away with a smirk on her face. “Jarvis is she allowed to just let people into my home?”
“Our home,” she corrected him. “I’ll be working in my office if you need me.”
“I will,” he called after her as she stepped into the elevator. “Because you just let a public menace into our home!”
“Who’re you calling a menace?” Peter whipped off his mask and scowled at Tony.
“Hi, Peter,” Pepper called across the room.
He grinned. “Hi, Pep! Bye, Pep!” he waved as the doors closed on her before turning to Tony. “You working on the new Tower design?”
“Sure am. Take a look,” he motioned Peter over to the desk and watched his thinking face take over as he studied the changes being made to the building.
“Avengers Tower,” he muttered, maybe a little bit of youthful enthusiasm touching the words. “Fucking unreal.”
“Very real, actually,” Tony chuckled. “Real enough that Bruce is moving in. Cap too, probably-- at least part-time.”
“Really?” Peter looked at him with a teasing grin. “You’re gonna have roommates?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “They’re getting their own apartments,” he explained. And then, a bit more carefully. “There’s space for you too. If you want it.”
And that seemed to catch the kid off-guard, or at least startled him enough to bring about that gobsmacked face that it was a real shame got hidden when he wore the mask. It was quite the treat in and of itself.
“What?” he gaped at Tony.
“A place for you,” Tony zoomed in on the hologram. “Right there, actually.”
Peter stared at it for a moment, tilting his head to the side and everything, before something seemed to settle in the set of his shoulders and he met Tony’s eye with a confidence that had been growing right in front of them for the past year.
“I appreciate the offer,” Peter said, polite but certain. “But I think I oughta stick to the neighborhood for a while. Help with the rebuild.”
“Fair. Totally up to you,” Tony said easily. “But you know you saved the whole world last week, right? Maybe Spider-Man’s jurisdiction is growing. In the grand scheme of things, Earth is really nothing but a neighborhood itself, you know?”
“Maybe,” Peter shrugged. “But Spider-Man’s from Queens. Plus, who’d keep Ned out of trouble if I was all the way in Midtown all the time?”
“Alright,” Tony brushed it off with a smile, not actually at all bothered by the refusal because it was exactly what he had been expecting. Spider-Man was from Queens, after all. “Offer stands though, if you ever need it.”
“Thanks, Tony,” Peter responded sincerely. “But I think I’ll stick to bothering you in the lab on weekends.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” Tony turned to face him fully. “Wanna help set up the remodel? I’m headed down there now.”
“I would,” Peter started backing away sheepishly. “But I kinda got someplace to be.”
Tony frowned. “What could you possibly have going on that’s better than literally designing a state-of-the-art lab from scratch?”
Peter grinned, one hand on the door that led back out onto the balcony.
“I’ve got a date.”
***
Michelle opened the door of her apartment to find Peter Parker with his rumpled clothes and stuffed-to-the-seams backpack smiling a lopsided grin at her and holding up a bag of takeout in one hand and bodega flowers in the other.
The city was still under a lot of stress, and most restaurants weren’t open, or if they were it was for takeout only, so going on a date had quickly turned into staying in on a date, but Michelle wasn’t complaining. It meant she got him all to herself for the whole night, that she could curl up with him on the couch and kiss him to her heart’s content without a gross mask getting in the way.
It meant they could talk and they could be awkward and bumbling and giddy without the eyes of strangers putting pressure on this brand-new but somehow still deeply familiar thing of theirs.
“Ready for date night?” Peter asked, a bit of nervousness touching his voice, as though he was still uncertain as to how fully and completely gone she was for him. As if he still had doubts.
And that just wouldn’t do.
“Sure am, Tiger,” she said with her entire chest and heart and lungs.
Michelle grinned at him, grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him into a firm kiss.
Now, that was more like it.
Peter Parker will return in...
“Breakthrough or Bust”