Avengers, Spider-Man 1. (What Once Was)

**Because we need Spidey angst.**

**And. Movie!verse Avengers, except teenage Spidey joined them ages ago, and also any verse!Fantastic Four making lots of appearances, especially Johnny Storm.**

**Enjoy.**

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_**Chapter 1- (What Once Was)**_

He doesn't know what the sun is.

He looks up, at the blue sky scattered with shreds of dirty grey cloud, the sun gleaming and sinking a red blush on the skyline standing stark against the brilliance. He ignores the pulses of pain through his body, just like he had been taught, and his breath chokes out hard from behind a dirt crusted red and blue mask which is the only thing he can trust anymore, the only protection against the world. And he feels the warmth on his bare hands and he wonders what the sun is.

He can name it, the ball of fire in the sky. He can recite its position, knows it is the centre of their solar system, knows about ozone and ultra violet rays and knows of the simple joy it is on a cold winter's day and the life it gives to seeds, knows how it scorches landscapes into weathered deserts and how it is crucial to existence. School had taught him of generations who worshipped it, tribes who revolved their lives about it much like planets. He knows as much of it as the next person and still, there is something that eludes him, some elusive fact that left the puzzle disjointed and crumbling; like hearing about the simple, pure sound of a flute from other people's descriptions but never experiencing it himself, so never knowing the truth about its beauty. It is like that but more, because he feels it in every staggering step he takes, every distant thought about what he has to do next, every observation about the cold and the grit under his hardened feet and the road empty of cars and the windows glazed and blank and shuttered, because there is something missing in all of it. Something taken. Something he can never recapture because it has been prised away from him, as surely as an arm is ripped from a body with a guilt that swallowed him up and the limb still warm under his clenching strong hands and the grin of his captors as they rewarded him with more blindfolds and gags and earplugs and restraints until he felt as if he was nothing at all-

Peter Parker swallowed, hard.

They'd given him back his web shooters, when they opened the door and ushered him out. He'd had the mask on the entire time, but the rest of his costume was gone and so it is with that same distant feeling of something missing that he swings up into the air, with only a shirt and ripped trousers and a mask to cover him from the biting cold. Its winter and the sun finally disappears, lights startling on and the streets beginning to fill, no one looking up and noticing the loose, broken figure swinging lost between buildings to an aimless location that was away from the memories. Only that figure could see the way they stained behind him, black ink clouds chasing after him with a leisure that makes his jaw clench and arms move faster, legs bounce and body twist and a freedom of almost flying that he should enjoy.

Yet, the missing piece that makes this all covered in fog, and the memories laughed at him. Mocking echoes of darkness, mocking echoes of loss.

He wonders, and wanders, and forces himself not to cry as sharp vision catches the date on distant, fluttering newspapers that glow in streetlights; _4/10/2013. _He's missed a year of his life and that isn't even the thing that hurt the most.

Somehow, sometime, he comes into the centre of New York and blank white lenses stare at familiar alleyways and shadowed roads alive with a seething mass of metal, because this was the city that never sleeps. He thought it would be like returning home, thought he would feel a sense of nostalgia and relief and- and _something, _but it is that missing piece that tears from him a whimper because he is destroyed. And it is all different.

_Oh, god. _

He doesn't know where to go, now. MJ is a distant memory, but the pain of breaking up with her is still new and present and there is no way he can go there. He'd moved in with... with the Avengers. Of course. He has to go to the Avengers. His- family. Friends.

_They were they were they were_-

And the memories laughed at him, because. Of course.

Of course.

He thinks this and his hands are automatically moving, spraying out webbing, legs pushing off the building and swinging the familiar route to what had once been his home. Before. Before, it- And he forces himself to keep from not focusing on the throbbing pain pulses, to keep swinging and moving, like he had been taught. He's doing well now. He isn't doing anything wrong. _Is he? _Is he- And there it is, bright and gleaming and proud and alight with the word _Avengers _and whathadoncebeenhome. Is it?-Still? And he swings down to the ground and ignores the curious glances from the cars that speed past and the drunken man in the street staggering behind him, and raises a hand and knocks on the door because he isn't sure what will happen if he swings through the window, because that is what he used to do b- before. _Before_. Always that word.

The door swings open and there is Hawkeye. Clint. Not in costume, of course, but tracksuits and t-shirt, circles under his eyes and a plastic grin twitching up the corners of Clint's mouth that he has only ever seen on Tony Stark when the man was talking to the media. The Avengers have changed, as well. Evidently. And Clint opens his mouth and closes it and his features contort into something of disgust, such a foul and unfamiliar emotion on what had once has been his friend's face that Peter flinches and the memories laugh. Loud. Flaunting.

"Clint? Who is it?" says a voice from behind, and Peter almost smiles because evidently (what had once been) his best friend, Johnny Storm, is visiting. The Human Torch steps into the doorway, flames playing around his fingers and cocky smirk faltering slightly at the sight of him. (What was- he doing _wrong?_)

"It's one of them stupid kids, pretending to be- be _him._ Probably a prank or something." And Clint is disgusted, and there are those undertones of grief. He realises something in a flash, standing in that doorway in the cold, with the light from the Avengers logo pale on his mask and hands clenched into fists to preserve warmth, pain beating little bloody pulses through him, memories cawing loud and inky to only his ears, and the cars just a sound behind him and a distant piece missing which he thought he could name, now. (It was his _soul-_) He realises that it was a year for the world, as well. That when.

(When he was trapped in there, when he suffered days and nights and aeons of darkness trapped, restrained, blindfolded, gagged, with earplugs, and deprived of every single sense until they came. And they came. And they told him to- and he did. And then he went back, and this is how they transformed into something begging for any touch or sound or voice and when it came in an onslaught and disappeared just as fast this- _this_- was how they broke him down. And destroyed him.)

That the year of his life was a year for them, as well. And they had mourned for him. Probably, and people had pretended to him and sarcastic newspapers had been published and no one cared for their hurt because it was all too public and. He knows all that. But. (It still hurts.)

"No, you don't understand," he tells them, and his voice is foreign even to his own ears. Hoarse. Strained. "I- it's me. Spiderman." And the pain shuddered through him, dark red, and he leaned heavily against the side of the doorway because he was going to collapse soon, he knew. "It's me." He repeated. Johnny looked sideways to Clint, the look suspicious, wondering, maybe a little hopeful. Clint's fingers twitched and he swallowed, and blinked and his fingers twitched again and he said, "Take off your mask."

And. He couldn't, because that would mean the last defence was gone, and that could. Never. Happen. (The memories laughed.) "Clint." He said, more firmly, slipping into the sarcastic quips and playful comments of (what had once been) him. "C'mon, man. You don't really want me to tell Johnny what happened on New Year's Eve to prove I'm me, do you?"

Clint's lips twitch as they both indulge in that secret memory that was a precious lighted night in a midst of things which he still isn't sure are real or not. Johnny narrows his eyes, though. "But," he says, voice full of remembered grief and he hasn't ever heard his friend show this much raw emotion. "Spiderman is _dead. _He- died. I went to the _funeral._" And his voice cracks on the last word, and he just stares defiantly at him, as if daring him to mention it. Of course he doesn't. He knows- how it feels. And he knows that he has to say something, but all of a sudden the pain beats screams in his heart and he slides slightly and gasps out a terrified breath. "Listen, please." He tells them. "I- I'm not- I can't take the mask off. Please." He repeats. "Just. Just _trust me._" And the two in front share a look, and he knows they aren't that close so it hurts all the more because they are close in the presence. Of. An. Outsider.

He is an outsider, now.

(But it wasn't his _fault-_)

Of course. Of- course. He lurches a step forwards and they don't move aside, but they don't protest, so he slips between them and into the warmth of the lobby, which is empty but comforting, with a soft light from above and rugs on the floor. He takes a moment to master the fear of being in four walls, which are closing and _and _trapping him and he is nothing again, with no way to move or think or hear or speak or taste or touch or feel or smell and. And. He breaths in then leaps up to the ceiling, hanging upside as he always used to, and this is proof of his powers and so him because Clint closes the door behind and they both step closer to him. "God, kid." Clint says, closing his eyes momentarily and then opening them and smiling at him. Not smirking, smiling, in unabashed relief. "We thought you were dead. For a whole year, we thought you were _dead._" And he makes himself laugh, though there's nothing funny, and he knows the feeling because he thought he was dead, sometimes. Johnny finally smiles as well, lighting his feet on fire and flying up next to him. "Show off." He grins (and it is not an attempt to make sure they don't start talking about anything important, it _isn't_) and laughs as Johnny tells him that he's one to talk and then makes a mini world out of fire just to show that, well, he's Human Torch and of course he's a show off.

"So," he finally says when an awkward pause in their easy banter arises. "Where's everyone else?" They both look uncomfortable and slightly guilty, as Clint responds, "Um. Out. Getting drunk."

"Really? Everyone?"

"Yeah. Well. You know today was the, um- anniversary of your death?"

He didn't.

"Well. We all wanted to get drunk, because of- well. But obviously there might have been an emergency so we're taking shifts. Us and the Fantastic Four, that is."

"You're taking shifts on getting _drunk_?" he asks incredulously, and then forces another laugh (though there's nothing funny, again, because it's mourning that he was dead and it all connects back to that terrible lost year.) "Huh. Well. That's new."

"Peter," Johnny says cautiously, and he just hides a flinch at his name, turning it into a cocking of his head towards Johnny. (Clint isn't fooled.) "What happened?"

"Ah. Battle. The- battle, I apparently died in. I assume you think I was burnt in the flames?" they nod. "Well. Got rescued- or captured, I guess. And, um. Then I escaped. And came here."

"Yeah, but-" Johnny starts, and he has an ugly look on his face- but, the mask. Clint seems to understand that things happened and so he stays silent but he still listens, and he doesn't intervene. "What happened? While you were captured?"

The memories laugh once more then shudder into him, and fill his throat with file and head with darkness and eyes with red and the pain pulses when every other sense is muted and dead, and everything in him just wants someone to- "Spidey? You okay?"

"Yeah," he answers curtly.

"Sorry, man." Johnny says, gesturing helplessly with his hands. "It's just- we thought you were dead, you know? And everyone, was like, upset, and then there were the newspapers still saying you were a terrorist and shit and Cap went up and said you were the best kid America ever saw but no one listened, just said he'd cracked, and, well. We had breakdowns. A lot of us. And we tried to find who was responsible, anyone, so we could do something- but. Nothing. For a whole year. And, I mean- when someone dies, it hurts, you know? But you get used to it. Eventually. You move on. And then this one time of the year where we're all allowed to think of you and just mourn and sink in self pity and you just- you just come back."

He thinks there might have been a point to that speech, but it got lost as emotions took over. Emotions are bad things, he wants to tell Johnny. They hurt and rip and claw and when everything else is darkness or dead they are the worst company you can have.

He doesn't say that, though, because these are friends and they haven't learnt the lessons he has. Nor does he wish them to.

"Peter? You okay?" Clint asks. He can hear in his voice that the archer knows. Of course. Of. Course. He used to be a member of a government agency; of course he had seen spies captured and tortured and he knew what he had been through, and there is pity in his voice, and a tortured helplessness and he wants none of it.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Do you want something to eat? And I'll- Johnny, call the others. Actually, they left their phones here. Fly out to them would you?"

Johnny seems to sense something unspoken- he realises something new in that moment, that these two have grown close not in the presence in an outsider but in the year he was gone, and now they are close friends and have the bond of unspoken communications. He's not bitter at that, but it reminds him how much he's missed. (And it reminds him how much he just wants to run, forever.) The Human Torch shouts 'flame on!' and flies out an open window. He watches him disappear round the corner, a faint residue of burning flame in the air where the trail of his flight was.

And Clint looks at him wordlessly. He sits on the ceiling and dangles upside down and doesn't say a word. "Peter," he begins, than stops when he cannot quite hide a flinch. "You don't like people calling you that, do you?" he observes.

"Not really," he says conversationally, and looks up for something other than those knowing eyes.

"Spidey, then. You were- tortured, weren't you?"

He shrugs, an upward moving of shoulders that dislodges his shirt and makes it slip down to showed the rope burns and mottled black and purple flesh (which, he notes in the tiny part of his brain that is still snarky Spiderman and is all he is surviving on right now, is the colours of Hawkeye- black and purple) and he hurriedly pulls the shirt back down and tucks it into his waistband. He looks back to Clint, who is gulping and staring angrily. He bites his lip.

"You're just a kid, they are _so fucked-" _Clint turns abruptly and slams a fist into the wall, making him jump and swing to the other side of the room and crouch in the corner before he remembers that this isn't one of those exercises they gave him, that this is Clint. Clint starts at his reaction and tells him he's sorry, that- he was just angry.

He sits in the corner of the ceiling and hurts.

"Pe-Spiderman. God. I'm- we're sorry. Do you have- a name, something? Do you know where you were held?" his brow furrows and he stares closer. "How did you get out?"

He huddles in on himself and tried not to sound defensive as he lies. "I escaped. I told you. Clint, please. I won't- I _can't- _talk about this. I just can't."

"You gotta talk to someone sometime, you know that, right? Sooner rather than later, because SHIELD's gonna want to debrief you and the others will want as much information so they can fucking kill whoever took you and I'm gonna help-"

He twitches in on himself and wonders, why. Why didn't he run when he had a chance, run and run and run and when he was somewhere, maybe on a cliff with the beauty around wild and salt lashed and crumbling and free, maybe stepped off and ended it. Or- if he was too much of a coward to do that, and then still run, run and run and run and get away and keep running. Why. He wonders.

Clint must see something in the way he positions himself, because he steps forwards with words and none of them he wants to hear, so when the door is wrenched open and people he knows pour in with haggard, hopeful faces and staggering steps from hard whiskey he's almost glad of the distraction.

Almost, glad.

_He should have run, and kept on running, and why? _

**As above. Because we needed more Spidey angst. Look forwards to more chapters soon because, this has so many feels I can't breathe. Review!**


	2. (The Fact That)

(**The Fact That)**

It's Tony first who speaks, as they all stand around him and stare with eyes he doesn't want to look at and gaping mouths of silence. It's always Tony who speaks first, he remembers that.

"_Peter_?"

He grits his jaw at that. But. It is his name. His name. They might have corrupted everything else, but he can fight against the conditioning that makes him flinch against his own name. He will fight it. And defeat it.

"Oh my god, you're actually alive, I can't believe you're _alive-_" Tony smiles, grinning that half smile of broken shards of glass as he steps towards him, hands hovering over him as if the inventor doesn't dare to touch in case this image evaporates, but needs to make sure it is real. And this breaks a spell, and the others- varying states of drunk-surround him, while Clint watches with shadowed eyes from the sidelines and Johnny spins and laughs in flames behind them.

And.

He hangs upside down on the ceiling and cocks his head like he's smiling and keeps the mask on. When they move up one floor to the main Avengers living area he stays on the ceiling because it's safer there, but he doesn't say that and pretends it's his usual quirky ways, and then they finally stop the _oh my god, I can't believe you're alive _and move onto actual talking.

(He doesn't want to talk.)

"So," Bruce says, and there's a tint of green in his eyes. "What happened?"

"I found a gold ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and ditched you guys to eat chocolate but them orange tiny guys kidnapped me and I finally chewed out of a toffee prison and here I am." He spreads his arms wide and tilts his head forwards, shoulders shaking slightly as if with laughter.

(It's not.)

"Peter-" Sue starts, he flinches, Clint's eyes harden. "Listen." Clint says. "I'm gonna take Spidey upstairs and sort him out and you guys can talk to him later, kay?" And though he's not the leader they all nod and drift away and Richard puts an arm round Sue and Johnny grins to Tony that he told him web head wasn't dead and Bruce drifts off for another drink with Natasha to take away the tinted green and Thor laughs with thunder to profess his happiness and Clint steps outside, and he has to swing through and follow.

Clint doesn't say anything as he closes the door softly behind him, then walks to the lift and calls it with an impatient press of the button. It opens and the archer steps in, looking expectantly at him- and he hesitates, because the lift is so much smaller then outside and the lights are dimmer and can he?- but he webs to the lift side and swings in, landing softly on the floor and leaning against the mirror as the lift doors close and they travel upwards. In the brief pause of the lift ride, Jarvis intervenes to say, "It is a pleasure to have you back, Mr Parker."

"Thanks, Jarvis," he manages through the slow harshness of the beats of his heart banging from the closeness of the lift walls. Then Jarvis ruins it by adding (in the same slightly worried tone he has when commenting on the other's various injuries or conditions), "Your heart rate is increasing exponentially. Might I ask what is wrong?"

He shuts his eyes behind the mask and doesn't answer.

Clint stays silent.

They get out at the floor which they (used to) relax on; like one huge living room, with games and laptops and TV's and snacks and sofas scattered round the comfy space. He swings up to the ceiling, sitting upside down and spraying bits of webbing to catch a magazine and pull it up, examining the headlines curiously. '_TONY STARK COMES OUT AS BI AND FUCKS SEVEN PEOPLE IN A DAY', _and his gaze moves down to the article below, but he drops it because it mentions his disappearance and questions this as the cause of various Avenger mishaps.

(He doesn't want to know about the pain he caused them.)

(The pain he got was enough.)

Clint strides under the couch beneath him, sinking into it and slamming a First Aid kit in front of him on the coffee table. The Avenger opens it and selects bandages and painkillers, setting them out then looking up at him- he lets go of the ceiling and flips forwards onto the couch.

(They taught him how to perform even when he's injured.)

(And he learns lessons well.)

"Kid," Clint says, looking seriously at him. "I'm gonna clean up your injuries. Then we're talking. That alright with you?" He nods and shrugs and stops short of making a joke, even though there's nothing alright about any of it. At all. But he doesn't flinch back when Clint moves forwards and with no hesitation pulls off his tattered shirt, looking with hard eyes at the wound beneath it.

(He doesn't like people looking.)

And then there's the hiss that escapes through his teeth at the sting of antiseptic, and the rip of bandages as they come off in neat rolls and Clint wraps them round his ribs, and then- the- (memories that laugh)- at the disgust- in the archer's eyes when he sees the neat little spider burnt into his shoulder- they said- it was to _mark- _him- and he knows the disgust isn't for him, but still.

Still.

And Clint goes off to get him some new clothes, which he slips on- a loose shirt, loose trousers, dark hoodie- and he keeps the mask on, because that is the Last Defence. And then they sit down and they talk. "So," Clint says, looking at him, eyes hard, fists clenched, forced smile. "You want to tell me the long version of what happened? No bullshit?"

And he shrugs and then he shakes his head, and.

And.

"Pe- Spiderman, please. I want to help you. _We _want to help you. But you have to tell us what happened. Everything you know. You won't have to repeat it twice, I promise. Just tell- me."

"I can't," he chokes, and his throat hurts and eyes sting and oh- _oh. _Here is where he pretends. Here is where he slips on the mask, which is something not physical but metaphorical and signifies the lies he is about to tell, the facade he is about to slip into in order to preserve the delicate web which stretches, from. Them. "Clint- please. It hurt, alright? They hurt me and they kept me for a year, and that's it. I can't remember who they were or where I was kept, and it's behind me now. I just want it over and get things back to normal, yeah?"

(And he does, but. He wants it back to normal, just- just.)

The Avenger opposite looks like he wants to press further then acquiesces with a sigh. "I'm here, if you ever want to talk." Clint reminds. He nods; swallows, and then they go back to the rest of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

There are questions. (Of course.) He answers them with lies and he laughs and laughs as the memories laugh along with him, a distant echoing ghostly soundtrack to the distant scenes playing out before his broken, broken eyes. He has to blink sometimes, pause in the middle of these countless conversations and remind himself that, this is not darkness, this is real. It is not a daydream or imagination or listless longing in the secret nothingness, and he has to interact and laugh and lie. And lie.

And he jokes and quips and insults, and keeps the mask on. He hangs from the ceiling and he talks with Bruce and Tony and Reed about all the science developments he missed (when) and he receives a fond smile and something muttered in Russian from Natasha, which is more than he's ever got. He chats with Sue and teases Thor and laughs at Steve's recounting of his still failing fumbles over modern technology. He doesn't have to grin behind the mask, but as long as they think he is then he is. It is other's perceptions that shape who you are- they taught him that.

(He learns well. Again.)

His flinches from the name 'Peter' slowly fade as the night passes because when pain doesn't accompany the two syllables then his body slowly gets used to the fact that hearing it isn't dangerous. And if he never takes off the mask, at all, and has those odd pauses of gulping (_what?_) in moments then, well, they don't say anything.

Clint watches from the sidelines, eyes still cold. Eventually he lets himself be fooled again, and promises to show him the latest on bow technology as according to Tony Stark. He feels an odd twist within himself at the last person who could maybe have known the truth, but it is his task completed, and if the tang of success is metallic like blood, then, well.

(The memories laugh and laugh and laugh.)

He disappears up to his floor- finally- with Johnny, to catch up on the programs he has queued on Netflix. They eat popcorn and Johnny remarks once, that maybe it would be easier to see without the mask.

He pretends he doesn't hear and Johnny sighs before turning back to the program they have on.

And everything is bright, clear cut, painless. Wandering, lying, laughing, intricate perfection. He wonders if this is not another halogen that solitude has drowned inside him, but if it is then-

Ah, they say, because they know.

-and when Johnny leaves, with a grin (he is convinced it is back) (to normal) (but.) and Tony comes to say good night in that sarcastically caring tender way he has, and he falls asleep. His dreams are black.

They won't let him move. He can't move. He is helpless and breaking himself inside out because there cannot be a worse sensation than this, unable to _move _oh god he can't. Can't _move _why aren't they- and there is nothing but the silence of his own thoughts, the screams he doesn't hear he _doesn't hear _and when the pain. When the pain comes, a tearing burning crusting sensation arcing tendrils of red through his shoulder, it is a sensation so he (almost) welcomes it.

He wakes up screaming.

Spiderman collapses back into the bed and breathes out hard into the air, the mask an obstacle but so, so welcome in the defence and mental comfort it provides. He rolls over to stare blearily at the time- just a few hours from when Johnny left, but the sun is bright through open windows. There's a set of clothes in the wardrobe from (before), which he grabs and changes into- they are a little large, no matter- and enters the bathroom to lift up the mask for an aching few seconds to hurriedly wash his face, then pull it back down to his nose and brush his teeth. There's a headache from tiredness building black ice in his skull, so he takes aspirin and swallows three pills dry. He washes his hands of grime and thinks about having a shower but he's not ready for hot water, not yet, and its winter so anything less will freeze him cold.

And then there's the matter of a wet mask.

He stretches, joints clicking and wounds aching, then settles into a chair with a sigh to change his bandages. He knows how to treat wounds, of course; years of teenage vigilante action on his lonesome took care of that. He probes his tender ankle with careful fingers- it healed from a break maybe two weeks ago, and he's still not sure if it set correctly- and shuts his eyes tight as a shiver of coldness rushes through him in unwelcome leaps.

It passes.

Everything passes.

His eyes are gritty with tiredness but he refuses to go back to sleep, so the obvious remedy; coffee. Tony will probably be awake, because Tony is always awake, so maybe he'll join him down in the lab and see the latest Iron Man suits. And those upgrades to the web shooters- still secured to his wrists- which he was thinking about (before). Yeah, that'll be fun.

And. Well. Tony is... he notices things. Not more than anyone else, but- there was Afghanistan. He's been tortured as well. Out of all of them, the older Avenger will be the most likely to see through his lies that he (is okay) and that is a- bad thing. Because it means he will have failed his task. Even if the task tastes of blood and hurts like hell, he has to complete it, because those are the Rules.

He knows the rules, by now. Knows them well.

Back to the point; if he spends more time with Tony, alone, able to concentrate on lying and maintaining the facade, there will be less chance of Stark noticing. So he webs out of his room and to the stairs, which he swings down with an easy remembrance one floor to the kitchen. It's empty, and Jarvis turns the lights on as he goes in, so he is free to drop to the floor and put the kettle on for coffee, then lean against the side and let his eyes slide shut with exhaustion.

Footsteps.

No senses for a year makes his senses now surprisingly acute; he hears before the spider sense even alerts him the approaching of someone's presence. The door to the kitchen swings open and Tony steps in, dark circles etched beneath tired eyes and sleep mussed hair, creases in a dirty shirt and soot covering him up to a very distinct line on his face. He can't help a genuine grin at the sight, bouncing up to the ceiling and nearer to Tony, inspecting the older man. "And... by the looks of you, I'm guessing it was something nasty?"

Tony looks up, a half smirk on his face. "Hi, Peter. And yup. Definitely something nasty. Think I got the chemical formula mixed up... just a bit..."

"A bit?" he teases, then swings over to the kettle when it pops. "Coffee?" he asks Tony, and upon receiving a tired nod in confirmation sets two mugs down to fill with boiling water and mix with crappy instant coffee because he can't be bothered to make something real with the actual coffee machine. He dashes milk in and stirs, handing one black to Tony- as if he'd take anything else, though the inventor still mutters something along the lines of 'blasphemy' at the fact it's instant coffee- then lifts up his mask slightly, gulping it down with abandon and ignoring as best he can the scalding in his mouth and throat.

"You can take the mask off, you know." Tony says in his usual blunt way, eyes far too alert for someone as tired as he. Or perhaps it's the coffee- the Avengers have seen proof on various occasions that coffee is the thing which fuels Tony and a drink of it makes nights of no sleep disappear like magic. "It's not forbidden. Or anything."

He shrugs and gulps the last of the coffee; setting it down at the sink and feeling his headache intensify. Should've taken more aspirin.

"Peter?" Tony tries. "I know there's something wrong, you know. You can't just go a fucking year in captivity and come back bouncing off the walls and throwing quips out like everything's back to normal. I was in Afghanistan for about a month and it fucked me up for years."

He sighs. "Yeah, well." He attempts, but can't think of anything to say after that, but- "I guess I didn't have it as bad."

"Peter. I have the highest IQ in the planet, you know that?"

"Actually, no- William James Sidis did, so there." He says, falling into easy banter.

"The highest intelligence, then- and don't you dare say otherwise, I built the fucking Iron Man."

"Reed Richards built a starship!" he parrots, grinning.

"_I built it in a cave._ Which, funnily enough, brings us back to the subject of captivity-"

"Bruce beat you in making that science formula, but go ahead and continue what you were saying."

Tony stops, scowls, narrows his eyes. "He did not beat me! Fine, it was that one time, but i hadn't slept in a week and Natasha drugged me because she had a bet with you-"

"Actually, it was Clint. And I drugged you."

"You did?"

"Yup. I stole the formula from those arrows you made for Clint that make people's minds go fuzzy."

"You're such a little shit." Tony groans. "Still, that proves I'm smarter than everyone else, doesn't it?"

"Victor von Doom-"

"Is a super villain and doesn't count."

"Hank Pym-"

"Did not create a suit in a cave."

"You always have to use that one, don't you?"

"Too right."

"Fine, then." He allows himself a moment to pause in victory. "Captain America mastered modern technology while it took you your whole life to know your way around it."

"Did not!" Tony gasps. "I knew how to reprogram a phone since I was two!"

"A year more than Steve got."

"You're not _seriously _comparing my intelligence to Cap's, are you?"

"No," he admits. "I was just getting him in the conversation so I could ask if you've resolved the sexual tension that's been stewing ever since... um, you met."

"Sexual tension?" Tony frowns. "I come out as bi and suddenly everyone's telling me to get my act together and date Captain America. I'm not in love with him, for fuck's sake!"

"Mm, yeah. Whatever. Seriously, Tony- you kissed him yet?"

He blushes.

"No! You didn't!"

"Just once," Tony starts. "And it was a mistake."

"A mistake, my ass."

"This conversation," Tony scowls, lifting his mug and slamming it in the sink. "Is _over._" The definitely-in-love-with-Captain-America-man storms out of the room and he shouts after him, "Let me know when I have to start preparing my best man speech!"

"You will not be my best man!" Tony shouts back, and there's a pause before his face reappears in the door. "And I'm not getting married, anyway!"

He listens to the door slam and smirks because he's found the one thing which makes Tony loose his cool.

And then the ache settles back in his chest and he has to clutch the edge of the kitchen counter for support because it's _all. Going. Wrong. _

**Aaaand chapter two. Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, and followed and favourite and everything- more reviews? Please?**

**Also. What do you guys think about Peter/?. Review with suggestions, if you think I should do it. I was thinking Johnny/Peter or Clint/Peter. And obviously background Steve/Tony. **


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Avengers, Spider-Man, Angst, Hurt-Comfort