Chapter Text
Pepper had indeed ordered enough food to fill three Norse Gods, which meant that she’d ordered enough to feed one spider boy, two human adults, with enough leftovers to leave some for Mr. Stark and for Peter to bring some home to May. Which he’d done. Walking through the front door with food did a lot to appease May’s displeasure at the fact that he didn’t get home till after ten.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t kept her up to date on his whereabouts.
It was just—talking with Pepper and Rhodey had been nice. They were no Mr. Stark, but were great in their own way. And he was glad he’d met Rhodey, ‘cause the guy was funny and nice and Peter was glad to know not only that another one of the Avengers was a trustworthy guy, but that Tony had a friend he could rely on. With Pepper, of course, there was no question.
But they’d both seemed genuinely interested in what Peter had been trying to make in Tony’s lab, and Peter’s life in general, and it had been nice to talk to people who were actually sensible.
It was almost as nice as talking to Tony.
There hadn’t been enough leftovers for lunch the next day, but Peter ate the rest of the leftover fried rice as he walked to school the next morning, and it made for an acceptable breakfast.
After school he picked up a sandwich at a deli before changing into his Spiderman suit and settling into patrol. He liked the feeling of swinging around New York, high in the sky, almost like flying, but the best thing was always that moment, when he first heard something bad going down, or felt a zing of electricity race up his spine, and knew he had the ability to help, so he could and did just jump right into action, helping those in need. That was the best.
He stopped a few muggings (old hat by now), helped Señora Martínez cross the road, got to pet three dogs (one boston terrier, and a couple of golden retrievers who wagged their tails so hard it made Peter almost cry in joy), and walked a worried-looking waitress home from her diner after her shift. It was a Thursday, so really he shouldn’t be out too late, but he’d missed yesterday, and Aunt May had given her grudging permission to stay out later than usual since he’d brought her food the day before (an example of his general competence and sense of responsibility!) Also, a little bit of it was, Peter thought, that he was getting older. He was almost an adult and she tried to respect that, to let him make his own adult decisions, and likewise let him deal with any consequences that might stem from that.
(He could just drink a cold brew before school tomorrow. Who needed sleep anyway?)
It was maybe one or two in the morning, and Karen had just recommended Peter go home—
“If you leave right now, and do not stop to pet any dogs, you can sleep 4.52 hours tonight.”
“Thank you, Karen.”
—when he heard a weird sound, a groan maybe, from a human or a machine, coming from the alley below him.
He could afford to stop and see where the noise was coming from. Karen wasn’t Aunt May, she had no authority over him (and didn’t even tattle to Tony anymore! Which was great, because Peter was not a child, and did not need a babysitter), and anyway, what if the groan was from an injured person? Peter couldn’t not help out.
He crept over the side of the building, down the crumbling brickwork, crawling down on fingers and toes, ignoring the pull of gravity which weighed on him, and which would, if he let go of the wall, crash him headfirst into the dank cement of the alley below.
But he was strong, and his extremities were sticky, and he didn’t fall. Instead, he crept all the way down, and twisted so as to land on his feet, and then looked around the dim and stinking alley, looking for a person, or something that could have made that noise, before he heard the groan again, emanating this time from a dumpster to his right.
The source of the stink.
Peter reached a hand up to the lip of the garbage receptacle (god, he was going to have to wash his suit super good after this), and pulled himself up so he could peer inside of it.
The groan came again, and this time Peter could see that it was coming from a human body. A male human body. A human body with blond hair (or at least it looked blond in the dim light from nearby street lights), with visibly ripped abs beneath a torn shirt. A human blond ripped male body who was clutching a bow to his chest, and who had a quiver of arrows laying beside him on top of piles of trash (mostly bagged, thank god), and who was groaning in pain.
“Oh my god,” Peter said, out loud, “you’re Hawkeye.”
The man groaned again, though Peter didn’t know if it was in agreement with Peter’s statement, or if he was just making an unrelated point.
“Oh shit,” Peter said. Hawkeye did not respond this time. Neither verbally nor with any gestures or anything.
His eyes were opened, Peter saw. Hawkeye was gazing upward with an expression of, well, Peter might have at first guessed it was pain, but which, upon closer examination, looked more like annoyance.
“Are you alright, Mr. Hawkeye?” Peter asked. Hawkeye did not respond. “Mr. Hawkeye, sir?” Peter asked, slightly louder.
Hawkeye let out a sigh, and shifted a little, almost as if he were settling into a more comfortable position.
Peter wondered if maybe whatever caused the hero to end up in this dumpster also damaged the man’s hearing. Hawkeye hadn’t noticed him at all.
Peter levered himself upward, putting all of his weight on his hands, until he was far up enough that he could position his feet beneath him on the lip of the dumpster. He let go with his hands, and there he perched on the edge of metal contraption, on the balls of his feet.
Hawkeye still hadn’t noticed him.
So he raised a hand and waved it, trying to put it in Hawkeye’s line of sight without putting himself in hitting range. He’d never met Hawkeye before but Tony had told stories of trying to sneak up on the archer to surprise him, and getting a kick the chest for his efforts.
The archer had an arrow notched and his bow drawn, the projectile aimed at Peter’s heart in less time than it took Peter to exhale.
Peter raised his hands up on either side of his head. “Hey! I’m friendly, I swear! I’m a good guy! Please don’t shoot me.”
The arrow didn’t move, and Peter shook himself. Right. The guy wasn’t responding to sound.
Peter pointed to himself, and then made a thumbs up, and then pointed to Hawkeye and made another thumbs up.
The arrow faltered a little. “Who are you?” Hawkeye said gruffly, and a little too loudly.
“Spiderman,” Peter said, and then pointed at the spider insignia on his chest because Hawkeye obviously wasn’t hearing him right now.
Hawkeye looked at his chest, and then slowly lowered his arrow. “Spider boy?”
Peter huffed. “Spiderman.” And then the shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m saying this. You can’t hear me.” Peter pointed at his own ear.
Hawkeye groped at his ear, and then at his other one, dropping his bow and arrow into his lap. “Oh shit,” the man said, “I knocked out my hearing aids!”
“Well that explains that,” Peter said, knowing that he was, in practice, only talking to himself. Since apparently Hawkeye was deaf. At least he knew it, and the sudden loss of hearing wasn’t a surprise.
Hawkeye patted at the trash around him but found nothing but a rotten banana peel and a pile of used coffee grounds amongst the bags of garbage. “Well fuck,” Hawkeye said, and then squinted at Peter. He rubbed at his forehead with his fingers, as if messaging a headache, and in the process smeared used coffee grounds, and slime, and just general dumpster gunk onto his face. “You been trying to talk to me?”
Peter nodded.
“Huh,” Hawkeye said. “And I didn’t notice the lack of sounds past the pounding in my head.” In a curious tone he said, “I think I might have a concussion.”
“Concussion?” Peter asked, and then shook his head fiercely. The guy couldn’t hear him! And he probably had a concussion. This was officially higher than Peter’s pay grade. “Karen,” he said out loud, glad that Hawkeye couldn’t hear this at least.
“Yes, Peter?” she asked, cool as a cucumber (as Peter guessed should be expected from an AI).
“Could you call Mr. Stark for me, I, uh…” He looked at Hawkeye, who was now shifting through the garbage, trying to find his hearing aids. “Just call Mr. Stark.”
“Calling Mr. Stark,” Karen said, and then there was a single ring before Tony’s voice was piped into Peter’s ears.
“Hey there, Pete,” Tony said, sound sharp and focused. “Kinda late to be calling me. Are you hurt?”
“No, Mr. Stark,” Peter said quickly. “Not at all!”
“Well good,” Tony said with audible relief. “Why are you calling me so late anyway? Shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”
“Aunt May said I could stay out late Spiderman-ing as long as I didn’t complain to her tomorrow when I, and I quote, ‘feel like the entire Manhattan bridge is wrapped around my head and the sun tastes like death.’ I think it’s a step in the right direction. She’s letting me make more and more mistakes.”
“Good for you,” Tony said, with a little laugh that was definitely of the at variety. Not with. “Now, what’s on your mind Spiderkid?”
“Oh!” Peter said, not even bothering to correct Tony about the kid thing. He didn’t think Tony was going to change any time soon. “So, I think I found one of your teammates.”
There was a definite silence on the other end of the line.
“Well,” Peter clarified awkwardly. “I shouldn’t say I think. I’d definitely recognize any of the Avengers, you know. And I did.”
“Who?”
Peter gazed at the man before him, who had given up the search for his hearing aids, and was now trying to lever himself out of the dumpster. Peter was pretty sure the guy was going to fall face-first on the asphalt if Peter didn’t intervene soon. But he gave Hawkeye at least another ninety seconds before he worked up the strength to actually pull him over the side of the dumpster wall.
“Hawkeye,” Peter answered. “Unless there’s another blond archer in the city? Hey, Hawkeye is deaf, right?”
Another loaded silence, and then, “Yes.”
“He lost his aids,” Peter explained, “and says he might have a concussion. So. Should I drop him off at the tower, or…?”
Tony let out a long sigh. “I’m not in the city at the moment. Apparently it wasn’t enough to just talk to the Honk Kong branch, they needed to see me in person.”
“You’re in Hong Kong?” Peter asked, and effortlessly caught the wobbly archer before he hit the ground. He set Hawkeye down on the ground gently, and the archer slumped against the side of the dumpster and pressed a hand to his head.
“Yes,” Tony said. “But don’t worry, we’ll be done in time for me to fly back before our sesh tomorrow. I took the suit.”
“Cool,” Peter said. He laid a hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder in commiseration, and then jumped backward when the guy jerked for his weapon again. “So, Hawkeye? Do I need to get him to the compound then? If you’re not in town, there’s gotta be at least a couple people at the compound, right?”
Tony hummed. “I’m not going to make you swing all that way upstate with a useless birdie on your shoulders. Plus, I know you’re not really keen on meeting all of the Avengers at once. And they’d have questions, and you might feel overwhelmed, and frankly Pete, it’s still a school night.”
“So what am I going to do?” Peter asked, approaching Hawkeye again, much slower this time, hands raised up before him. And Hawkeye watched him approach.
Tony hummed. “I could send someone to pick him up. Or you could have him radio for back up.”
“I’m pretty sure I can’t ask him much right now,” Peter said. “He can’t hear me.”
“Right,” Tony said, and then made a noise that was the verbal equivalent to a shrug. “Alright, I’ll have someone swing by where you are.”
“Do you need the closest cross-street?” Peter asked, already trying to figure out what intersection was closest.
Tony sighed in disappointment. “I have GPS, Peter. Please. Who do you think I am? Now, I’ve got to go. Mr. Zhang looks like he’s about to kick me out of my own building in anger. Good luck.”
And then he was gone.
Peter let out a long sigh and wondered who Tony was sending to pick up the archer. Maybe Happy. He didn’t know who else Tony would trust to get the damaged Avenger.
Hawkeye was tracking him loosely, and Peter wasn’t a doctor, but he was pretty sure Hawkeye's eyes shouldn’t be dilated like that.
The man looked nervous, and jittery, and like he didn’t know what to do, and Peter really wished he could tell the man that someone was coming for him, so he didn’t have to keep freaking out. Too bad he hadn’t found his aids.
Oh.
Wait.
Maybe.
Maybe, Peter thought, maybe Hawkeye was good at lip reading? It would stand to reason that someone with reduced or nonexistent hearing might be able to read lips fairly well. And Hawkeye didn’t really strike Peter as someone who wouldn’t put effort into readying himself for any possible problem that might arise. Like losing his hearing aids.
Peter casually pushed his mask up to reveal his mouth, letting the lip of it sit over the bridge of his nose, and he carefully didn’t worry about how he might be identifiable just from his chin and mouth alone.
That would be crazy.
“Hey,” Peter said, “can you read lips?”
“Fuck, dude,” Hawkeye said with a definite slump to his shoulders, and voice heavy with relief. “Of course I can read lips. Jesus.”
“Oh, well, great,” Peter said lamely. He cautiously got closer, and then crouched in front of the man. He would have sat cross legged, like the archer was doing, but frankly not even Tony had enough money to pay Peter to sit on the disgusting ground, inches from a dumpster that smelled like rot and garbage. “Why were you in a dumpster?”
Hawkeye shrugged. “Why not be in a dumpster?”
“Because it’s made for trash,” Peter said, “and you’re not trash? Also it stinks to high heaven, and you have a concussion.”
“I was in a fight, ok?” Hawkeye snapped, and then squeezed his eyes shut. Much softer, he said, “Some mob people might have a hit out on me? I mostly took care of it, but that last guy shoved me off the roof after I shot him. Which was very rude of him, by the way, and if he isn’t dead I’m going to sue him for damages.”
“Ah,” Peter said, and then realized Hawkeye’s eyes were still squeezed shut. He lightly tapped Hawkeye on the shoulder, and when the man opened his eyes, said, “You should probably go home.”
“Yeah,” Hawkeye said dejectedly. “Walking is going to be a pain in the ass though.”
Peter blinked. He should tell the guy that someone was coming to pick him up, but how would he explain how he knew that? Mr. Stark had told Peter he wouldn’t tell the Avengers that he was close to Spiderman, in order to protect Peter’s secret identity (and Peter had been so grateful when he heard that), so there was no reason for Peter to know that Mr. Stark was sending someone to pick Hawkeye up. He wondered what excuse Tony was going to use for how he knew to send someone to pick Hawkeye up.
Peter couldn’t think of anything.
“You have a cell phone?” Peter asked.
“Duh,” Hawkeye said, rolled his eyes, and then winced.
“Call someone,” Peter said. “Surely one of the Avengers must me awake this late. Maybe someone can come get you?”
He sent a silent apology to Tony for possibly messing up his plans. Well, if someone really would come to pick Hawkeye up, he’d just ask Karen to ask FRIDAY to tell Mr. Stark, and Mr. Stark could call Happy, or whoever, off.
“I could call them,” Hawkeye said petulantly, “but I wouldn’t know if they answered, or what they were saying.” He pointed to his ear.
Now it was Peter’s time to roll his eyes. Though it was wasted, since Hawkeye couldn’t see his eyes behind his mask. “I can translate,” Peter offered. “I could listen to what they say, and then tell you, and you could read my lips.”
Hawkeye was silent for a second, lips pursed, and Peter thought he was going to refuse, but then, very quietly, he asked, “You’d do that for m—a stranger?”
Peter shrugged. “Of course. I’m your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. Haven’t you heard? I’m famous for helping little old ladies cross the street, rescuing cats from trees, and making uncomfortable phone calls for people. It’s right in my job description.”
For the first time, Hawkeye actually smiled. “Hey! That’d be really fucking nice! Thanks!” He pulled a phone from a zipper pocket in his pants, which Peter now realized were black and covered in zippered pockets. Like the cool, spy version of cargo pants. Hawkeye dialed, tapped the speaker icon on his phone, and then held the device between them.
The phone rang once and then cut off, like it had been answered, but no one spoke. Peter narrowed his eyes at the phone, tilted his head to the side, but, right, it wasn’t like Hawkeye could hear that someone had answered, and then said nothing.
“Hello?” Peter asked tentatively.
“Who is this?” a clipped female voice said, at the same time Hawkeye jumped and said, “Oh! She answered?”
Peter nodded at Hawkeye, at the same time the female voice said, “Hawkeye, report!”
“She said to report,” Peter said to Hawkeye sotto voce.
“Well I got thrown into a dumpster,” Hawkeye started, but his voice was overruled by the female voice (it had to be Black Widow, right? Or possibly Scarlet Witch) saying, “Who is that with you?” It was a demand, not really a question.
But Hawkeye couldn’t hear her, so he continued, “by those asshole bedstuy mobsters. I mean, can you believe it? I—”
Peter cut him off with a wave of his hand. “She wants to know who I am.”
“Oh,” Hawkeye said. “Sorry, Nat. Lost my ears! I’ve got a friendly who’s translating for me. You can ignore him.”
“I will not,” she said harshly.
“She’s not going to,” Peter told Hawkeye.
Hawkeye shrugged. “Shoulda guessed that, I s’pose.”
“Hey, friendly,” she snapped. “Let me talk to you. Tell the idiot Hawk to shut the hell up for a second.”
Peter looked at the phone. “She wants to talk to me?” Peter said, questioningly. “Can you hold on for a second?”
Clint shrugged. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere any time soon,” he said, and gestured to the alley they were sitting in.”
“Thanks,” Peter said, and then directed his voice into the phone, knowing that Clint would be reading his lips, and would therefore know at least his half of the conversation. (He could have pulled his mask down, but that would have been needlessly cruel). “Hello?” he said stupidly, to the spy on the other end of the phone.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “How did you get him to call me on his phone?”
“I’m Spiderman,” Peter said, succeeding in not squeaking through great force of will, but unable to do both that and sound confident and adult at the same time. “I just, it’s not like I coerced him into calling you? It’s just that I found him in a dumpster—he says he was pushed off the roof and fell into the dumpster that way— and he was planning on walking home, but you guys live at the compound upstate, right? He said he might have a concussion, so walking that far was hella out of the equation. So, I don’t know, I asked him if any of the Avengers would come pick him up if he called, and offered to be his ears since I think he lost his hearing aids when he fell.”
“Off the roof,” Black Widow said drily.
“Yes,” Peter said, “or that’s what he says. I wasn’t here for the falling bit, just the finding bit.”
“And since he lost his aids,” she said, her whole voice a taunt, “why didn’t he just text one of us.”
“Oh!” Peter exclaimed, having completely forgotten about that function of a cell phone. He turned to Hawkeye. “You could have texted her!”
Hawkeye blinked at Peter. “Well, shit, dude. You’re right!”
“You’re a moron,” Black Widow said. “Tell him I said that. Tell him I called him a moron.”
Peter grimaced. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” Black Widow said in a voice that brooked no argument.
Peter eyed Hawkeye. “She says you’re a moron.”
Hawkeye shrugged unconcerned. “What’s new? So, Nat, are you coming to get me or what?”
“Tell him this. ‘Of course we are, you goddamn moron.’ Verbatim.”
Peter grimaced harder. “She says, ‘Of course we are, you goddamn moron.’”
Hawkeye grinned happily. “How long?”
“Ten minutes,” Black Widow said.
“That soon?” Peter asked, surprised into forgetting to translate. As an aside to Hawkeye, he mouthed, Ten minutes.
“We got a notification earlier that Hawkeye needed help and we headed out then.”
“We?” Peter asked.
“You said you were Spiderman,” she said, not really a question, and ignoring Peter’s question as well.
“Yes,” Peter answered anyway.
“You think you could get him to the roof he fell off of?”
“I’m pretty sure he was pushed,” Peter said.
Obviously realizing what Peter was referencing, Hawkeye piped up as well. “I was pushed, Nat! I was pushed off the roof by a very mean mobster, who I also shot up with arrows.”
“Good for you,” Natasha said, heavily sarcastic, and then said, “tell him I said that. And really lean into the sarcasm.”
Peter thought about this. “Will he be able to read the sarcasm from my lips?” And then realizing how rude it was to ask Black Widow this when Hawkeye was right there, asked the man, “Will you be able to read sarcasm when you read my lips?”
Hawkeye squinted at him. “Why? What did she say?”
“Good for you,” Peter said, doing as he was told and leaning into the sarcasm.
“Oh yeah,” Hawkeye said, “I can definitely tell.”
“Thanks,” Peter said.
“Good job,” Black Widow praised him. “Now get him up to that roof.”
“Why?” Peter asked, and then said to Hawkeye, “We’re supposed to get on the roof. I can help you up. Can you stand?”
“Back up to the roof?” Hawkeye whined. “I was just up there!”
“Just get him on high,” she said, exasperated. And then she hung up.
The phone’s screen blinked, and then turned black.
“Up to the roof I guess,” Hawkeye said. He looked at Peter. “Listen, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think I even want to be walking up there, so however we’re going to get up, it’s going to take a minute.”
“I’m Spiderman,” Peter said slowly. He pointed his web shooter at the lip of the roof and pressed it with his middle and ring finger. A web shot out and adhered to the ledge of the roof. He tugged it to show how sturdy it was.
Hawkeye looked impressed for a second before putting an unimpressed look back onto his face. “Do you expect me to just climb up it?”
“I can dead lift an 18-wheeler,” Peter said, “I can carry you up the side of the building.”
“Prove it!” Hawkeye said, and so Peter did.
Peter wrapped his arms around Hawkeye, who was still sitting down, easily lifted him to a standing position, and then gripped Hawkeye tight around the waist with one arm, held the web with the other, put his feet (first one, and then the other) against the wall, and started walking straight up, Hawkeye dangling at his side.
The archer was tense, and clutched at the bow and quiver of arrows he’d wrapped around himself before falling out of the dumpster.
“I would have just picked you up and jumped,” Peter said, turning his head so Hawkeye could read his lips, though he had no idea if Hawkeye would be able to since Peter’s head was sideways compared to Hawkeye’s orientation. “But that might have rattled your head even more.”
“Shouldn’t you be watching where you’re going?” Hawkeye asked tightly, teeth clenched together, and whole body tense, like he wanted to wriggle out of Peter’s grasp but knew it would just mean another drop.
Peter looked where he was going (straight up a brick wall) and then back over at Hawkeye. “I’m just going straight up. It’s not like there's traffic up here.” And then they were at the top, and Peter pulled Hawkeye over the ledge, and the man dramatically collapsed onto the roof.
“I thought I was going to die!” Hawkeye moaned.
Peter wanted to tell the man not to be so dramatic, that they weren’t even going that fast, and that Peter was super strong and there was no danger at all, but Clint wasn’t looking at him, and therefore couldn’t read his lips. Which might have been done on purpose.
And then there was a loud sound, and a plane that hadn’t been there moments before was now hovering in the sky above them.
“What the fudge?” Peter breathed out, eyes wide, staring at the plane as it slowly landed on the roof. The plane wasn’t that big, and it must have been the quinjet Tony sometimes talked about because stealth like that could only be perfected by Tony Stark. Peter hadn’t even noticed it, and his senses were way above par.
Of course, it was getting pretty late, and he was tired, so maybe that had played into it a little.
The plane touched down, and within minutes two people were descending onto the roof.
Hawkeye had noticed the force of a plane landing, even if he hadn’t heard it, and was now on his feet to greet the two people coming towards them.
“Nat! Did you bring my ears?”
The female figure, the Black Widow, threw something, and Hawkeye caught them in a deft motion that belied the fact that he had a concussion, and slipped them on, one on each ear They were tiny, almost like earbuds, and flesh tone, so they blended right in.
“You’re welcome,” the Black Widow said.
She turned to Peter, and he hastily pulled his mask down over his mouth.
“You must be Spiderman,” she said. “Thank you for taking care of this idiot until we could collect him.”
“Don’t treat me like an object,” Hawkeye whined, and stumbled a bit. The other figure approached, and Peter realized it was Steve Rogers. Captain America. No, not Captain America at the moment. He had on soft pants and a loose t-shirt, and looked kind of like he’d been about to go to bed when this came up. Or had been pulled out of bed when this came up. The Black Widow was wearing jeans and a sweater and somehow still looked a thousand times more put together than the three men combined.
Steve Rogers took Clint by the arm and gently started leading him back to the plane. “Thank you,” Rogers said seriously, “for taking care of him.”
“No problem,” Peter said, “just make sure to keep him off the streets until he can walk straight.”
Rogers cracked a grin at him, said “sure thing,” and then disappeared with Hawkeye up into the jet.
Black Widow was still standing there.
“So,” Peter said into the awkward silence. “I guess I’ll head out then, since Hawkeye’s been reclaimed by you two.” He waved a hand, about to jump over the edge of the building and swing home (where his bed was calling to him), when Black Widow spoke.
“You’re a pretty good guy, you know that?”
Peter fidgeted, and then shrugged, not making eye contact, even though he knew she couldn’t see his eyes past the mask anyway. “I try.”
She gifted him with a small smile. “You succeed. See you around, kid!” and then she jogged back up the ramp into the jet, and within seconds it was airborne once more, and invisible against the night sky (even to spider enhanced eyes).
“I’m not a kid,” Peter said, a sigh to the wind.
He was alone on the roof.
And then he heard a groan, and thought two things. 1. He wasn’t alone on the roof, and 2. He hoped another bozo hadn’t been pushed off the roof and into a dumpster. But on closer inspection, it wasn’t coming from a dumpster, but from a man in a velour tracksuit, half hidden behind an air conditioning unit on the top of the roof, where it looks like he’d dragged himself after getting shot twice (one in the knee, once through the shoulder) with arrows.
Peter sighed. “Fine, let’s deal with the mob guy, shot by Hawkeye, and then go home.”
The man moaned again.
“Hospital for you, I guess,” Peter said to him, and hefted the man into his arms.
When Peter got back to his and May’s apartment almost a full hour later, he was exhausted, but forced himself to take a shower (mobster blood is a nightmare, gets everywhere) before heading to sleep.
And Aunt May had been right. When he woke up the next day, after not nearly enough sleep, he did feel like his head was in a vice of metal and concrete, and sunlight tasted horrible.