Marvel One-Shots [NO REQUESTS]

TAKING A BULLET

It was supposed to be a quiet night out for Tony. His hired look-alike was distracting the paparazzi on the other side of town, Pepper was at her mothers with baby Morgan and Peter was off on his usual patrol. He finally had time to himself, away from the aftermath of the Accords and the Avengers currently living in the Compound. He could just walk around town, relax and push his thoughts aside.

He took a familiar route that he commonly walked in his rare free time, away from the majority of the public eye. The streetlights lit his way on the pavement, illuminating his face, and was the only reason Peter saw his mentor. Without the light, he would of assumed Stark was a normal pedestrian and continued to swing around. Instead, he decided he was going to give the man a small scare.

Peter isn't evil, the furthest from it actually, but even he drew the line somewhere. Almost every day for over a month, Stark had set up harmless mini glitter bombs around Peter's personal lab, even one in the mask of his suit around a week ago. All he wanted was some wholesome revenge and the chance to give Tony a jump scare, nothing terrible.

Formulating a plan, Peter moved swiftly through the shadows on the roof tops, following Tony. That was when his spidey-senses (he was yet to come up with a more professional name for the superpower) started going off. Something was going to happen, but not to him for once, it was directed towards Stark.

Before he was even certain, he flung himself from his hiding spot and used his body as a human shield for Tony. Just in time, he realised, as the bullet had been a split second from embedding itself into Stark's chest. As it tore through Peter's suit, into his skin, he shot out a web that incapacitated the hooded man that had been holding the gun onto the ground.

The force from the bullet threw Peter back, luckily falling straight into Tony's arms. The billionaire, for one painfully long second, didn't fully take in what had just played out in front of him. Then his brain caught up to the harsh world around him and he kicked into action.

After gently lowering Peter onto the ground, he ripped the sleeve off of his jumper and applied pressure in hopes to stop the blood flow. He took his phone out of his pocket, dialed Happy's number and told him to get the doctors on floor five (the Avengers private medical wing) ready. 

Tony didn't say who was hurt, but Happy had an idea. He'd never heard his boss sound so panicked for anyone but his family, Rhodey or Peter. Since Pepper, Morgan and Rhodey were fine, that left the latter and panic to worm its way into the man's mind. But, no matter how concerned he was for the kid, he did as he had been told and prepared the med bay.

Peter bit his lip, struggling to contain his screams of pure pain. Black spots were taunting him as they danced across his vision and his mind begged him to fall asleep. But he didn't, he couldn't. May had once warned him about what would happen if someone did when severely injured, after finding out he was Spider-Man, knowing what he'd see from the people that were sent to the Hospital she worked at.

He listened to Tony's panicked voice, pleading him to stay conscious and to 'hold on'. Peter regained control over his breathing, calming himself down, and stared up at the evening sky. His eyes flickered to one star in particular, a smaller one almost overshadowed by the larger ball of light next to it. For some reason he took comfort in the explosion taking place thousands of lightyears away from where he was laying, barely clinging to life.

The bullet was lodged in between his ribcage, concerningly close to his heart, Peter could feel it. It wasn't like he'd never been shot before, whenever he went on patrol while low on rest he was occasionally too late when it came to dodging attacks, but that didn't make the pain any better. All it meant was that he knew how painful the healing process might be. That's even if he did manage to recover.