Chapter Text
Awareness comes in layers. First comes feeling, fire in Peter's veins and a pounding headache assaulting his brain. Then comes hearing, isolated whispers echoing around him, sending shivers down his spine and making his eyelids flicker slightly. Then comes smell, a distinct stale hospital-like odor and rubbing alcohol invades his nose. Peter wrinkles his nose and mumbles in his half-aware sleep. The voices still.
"Peter?" Peter mumbles again and shifts, hoping the people would just let him rest. The voices sounds familiar though, one with a southern accent and the other with a nasal tone to it. "Peter," they say again. "Get up."
Harsh. Couldn't a guy get a little rest?
Sadly, the voices were too persistent. They came back again and again, whispering how he needs to wake up, how he have something he has to do-- something about a restaurant. Weird. So he forced his eyes open, willing the black to go away reluctantly. It was nice, in the dark. Comforting, like there's a presence hovering near him, waiting for him to go to them. It's not often that Peter gets rest, and if he does, it's always interrupted.
Now he's awake and aware. Blurry faces stand tall around him, stiff with slightly annoying professionalism. Peter just wants to wake up normally for once, but noooooo, he can't do that. The creepy faces stare into his soul, and as his vision gets better and better, Peter can see that these people are literally his worst nightmare personified.
Dark skin greets Peter's gaze, along with a slightly wrinkled eyepatch and pristine black clothes. Emo.
The other person has streaks of gray and white in his hair and weird old beard. Cold blue eyes stare back at him, matching the person's strange tunic and jewelry.
Nick Fury and the asshole, Stephen Strange.
Of course.
They were the only people who would wake Peter up like this, cold, harsh, and honestly stupid. They're stupid. Everything's stupid. Peter just wants his sleep. Why can't he just get some sleep for once? What's wrong with a nice long night or rest or two? Why do people have a problem with that? It's just sleep!
Peter wants to cry.
"You're finally awake." Nick Fury comments, hands clasped behind his back.
"No shit, Sherlock." Peter mumbles under his breath, unaware of how Fury cocks an eyebrow upwards at his sass.
"Wanna say that again?" Fury asks Peter. Strange stands aside, stone-faced. Peter resists the childish urge to stick his tongue out and blow a raspberry at them. If he did that, he would face imminent consequences that would probably haunt him forever. It would be worth it though, seeing the look on the older men's faces if he did that.
He made the wise decision to not tempt death that day.
"No sir." Peter muttered. "Actually yes, but I can't do it because you look like you'd kill me in my sleep if I ever slept again after this weird encounter."
"Did you just call me weird, Parker?" Fury's eyebrow was now raised impossibly high. he glowered at Peter, who decided to dig his grave even deeper. Could you blame him? He's tired, exhausted, even! He's been asleep for who-knows-how-long (which is obviously not long enough), with no memories of how he fell asleep... Wait, what?
How can he fall asleep with no memories about laying down in his bed?
Blood
Peter finally takes a look around the room. It looks like a normal... hospital... room. An IV is injected in his arm, pumping liquids into his system-- but no normal IV is able to give him the nutrients he needs, due to his enhanced metabolism. A heart monitor is beeping steadily beside him, along with his vitals. Tables and cabinets were placed artfully around the room, and the bed sat by a reinforced window. Why is he in the hospital? How is he in the hospital? Surely, if he really was in that cursed place, they would know that he's Spider-Man. And by the looks of it-- the window, the cabinets, the weirdly squishy bed that seems to be made to adapt to his senses-- they did know.
Shit.
But, knowing Fury, he would not let his asset be discovered. Peter had work Fury needed him to do, and if he dies or is discovered, then it... wouldn't look good for Fury, to put it lightly. There are missions only Peter could do, and missions that others could do. The missions Peter does are often very important.
So yeah, that was a... comfort.
"You, Parker, have been seeming dodging the elephant in the room, per say." Strange spoke up, voice echoing off the sterile white walls. Peter gave him a confused look. "You seem to be avoiding talking about-"
"About what," Peter interrupted. Any sense of decorum dissipates when he wakes up. He just wanted to go back to sleep. "how you woke me up in a room that smells like fridge and stared at me while I slept?" He's not saying how he knew how fridge smelled. That's for him to know and nobody to find out.
Fury and Strange exchanged a look. Peter wanted to punch something.
After a long moment, Fury spoke up. "About the mission."
"What mission." Gosh, wouldn't it be wonderful if he could throw a chair at those men? Wouldn't it be wonderful to see them crushed-- not fatally-- under a crappy metal chair? But he can't throw things, he's Spider-Man. That would be stupid, like these men.
"You will be going undercover at a restaurant. This place seems to be trafficking drugs from Russia, and may be connected to a Russian Mafia. You will work as a waiter there until you have gained the trust of the owners there. Report everything and anything to me."
"And what about this bitch? What's he doing here?" Peter gestured to Strange. The looks on their faces were beautiful, mouths on the floor, hair somehow graying even more-- Peter had no idea that was possible--, hands running down their faces in defeat and something else that Peter can't place-- not that he wants to. He smirks.
That felt good.
"I-" Strange took a deep breath after a long pause and collected himself. "I am here because you needed medical attention."
"And why couldn't Dr. Cho help me?" Peter smirked at the older man's obvious discomfort around him.
"Because-" Strange started, and Peter tuned him out, until Fury cut in. "That's enough. Parker, you start tomorrow. I don't care whether or not you're feeling up to it, that's what's happening. Now rest a bit, grab something to eat, and get. Ready."
With that, the two older men whirled around, and pranced out of the room.
"They may be bitches," Peter thought. "but they sure are divas at times."
Matt can still feel it.
The blood coating his hands, the hollow where his kid's heartbeat was supposed to be. The feeling of cold creeping into skin that shouldn't ever be that cold. The lightness of Peter, dead in his arms.
His stomach lurches, threatening throwing a lunch that Matt never ate, because how was he supposed to eat if the kid would never again?
Matt is tired of this. He can't sleep without hearing the screams, or feeling the blood seep into his fingernails, or the fucking silence.
Why couldn't it have been him, who took the blow?
He curls up into a ball on the couch (the bed was always Peter's when he crashed at Matt's place), and just...
...Sobbed.