Chapter Text
If Peter had known what would happen when he showed up to that fight, he might have actually listened to the advice of every responsible adult in his life and stayed in school.
But Peter’s spider sense was not nearly specific enough to warn him of the danger to come, so leave school he did, setting into motion events that would soundly bite him in the ass.
In Peter’s defense, he had certainly not been looking for trouble. He had been sitting in fifth period pre-calc, minding his own business and staring out the window as he waited for the rest of his classmates to finish their test. It’s a futile hope that everyone would be done before the end of class, but Peter isn’t an eternal optimist for nothing! Unfortunately, that window turns out to be his downfall, because it gives him a stunning view of the giant, purple portal that appeared right over Manhattan.
Peter shoots to his feet, muttering something about the bathroom, and rushes out the door. He pauses only long enough to grab the bag with his spidersuit from his locker, then he is off out the door. He knows exactly what to expect the second he pulls his mask on.
“You have an incoming call from Mr Stark,” Karen says, somehow managing to sound exasperated.
Peter wishes he could convince himself that she’s exasperated with Mr Stark and his helicopter-y calls, but he knows she’s exasperated with him for ditching school. Oh well, it’s not like he was ever gonna miss this fight.
“Answer it,” Peter says reluctantly, knowing full well that they’ll need to be in active communication for the fight. May as well get the lecture over with first.
“I could have sworn that spider-babies had school at this time,” Mr Stark says, obviously in the suit from the sound of the thrusters in the background.
Peter sighs, deciding to pick his battles and, unfortunately, discussions about reasonable nicknames are not worthwhile battles at the moment. “I would also like to be able to continue attending school, like, in general, and who knows if I could do that after whatever the hell this portal is does whatever the hell it's going to do.”
“Or you could have stayed safe in your precious school and let the professionals handle it,” Mr Stark says.
“Oy, no need to insult the school,” Peter says. “Who’s around today, then?”
“Me and Natasha. Most of the others are off in wedding planning bliss. Or panic. Probably both.”
Peter pauses, surveys the weird energy (gas?) that is coming out of the portal and coalescing into odd shapes. “Any chance you just forgot to mention Mr Dr Strange?”
Mr Stark grunts. There’s the sound of him hitting the ground. “Nope. I’ve called and left no less than three voicemails, and he has the audacity to not respond. Not many people can say they’ve screened a call from Tony Stark.”
“Are you sure he’s screening your calls and not, like, off in another dimension?” Peter feels he has to ask.
“Amounts to the same thing doesn’t it?” Mr Stark asks.
By this point, Peter has made it to the fight. He shoots his webs at the amorphous shapes that are surrounding Iron Man, and he’s puzzled to see the shapes disappear the moment his web makes contact. It’s almost trivial for Peter and Mr Stark to clear out the blobs in their immediate vicinity, earning a breather for themselves that they don’t even need.
“Any idea what the hell is going on?” Peter asks, watching the energy hanging above the city and waiting for it to take a shape that they can fight. “What we really need is some way to get rid of that energy.”
“I have Friday on it, searching on all of the databases for anything at all relevant. Once Natasha gets here and can be your backup, I’m going to get a closer look at that,” there’s a barely noticeable pause, “portal.”
Peter looks nervously at the Iron Man mask, wishing he could see Mr Stark’s face. He also wishes he could offer to fly up to look at the portal himself, but as cool as his suit is, it can’t fly.
“You know, we should really look into adding thrusters to my suit. I know, I know it’s not very spider-themed, but some spiders can glide, which, like, flight is close enough to gliding in this case. It’d be, like, super useful and even cooler—”
“Wow, I can’t believe you abandon your fellow spider for the sake of the cool factor like that,” Ms Natasha says, running around the block and into sight.
“Aw, Ms Natasha, you know I would never abandon you like that. I just want to be able to fly. I don’t know how much you heard, but I had some really excellent reasons—”
“Agree to disagree, kid,” Mr Stark says.
“Aw,” Peter groans.
“Nat, you watch the kid’s back. I’m going to go check out the portal. See what I can do to shut that shit down.”
“You sure you’re good to do that?” Ms Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow.
Mr Stark takes off. “Yup.”
“Simple, I like it,” Peter says, watching him go for a moment, before returning his gaze to the street.
“Of course you do,” Ms Natasha says.
“Any preference for what we tackle first?” Peter asks, looking at the newly-formed blobs he can spot some distance away.
Ms Natasha takes off towards the biggest group of blobs.
“Simple, I like it,” Peter repeats. He shoots a web and follows after Ms Natasha. He loses himself in the fight against the blobs for a while, only occasionally surfacing to marvel about how weird and cool these enemies are. He’s also a bit baffled by how easy they are to defeat.
“I have seriously never fought an enemy like this before!” Peter exclaims, whipping around in a circle and demolishing several blobs with his extended foot. “They’re such a weird and cool blend of amorphous and corporeal, like I can smash them with my fist,” Peter runs up to one and smashes it with his fist, “but I bet we could maybe breathe them in. We could definitely slurp them up—”
“Absolutely not,” Ms Natasha says, taking out her own group of enemies. “There will be no breathing and no slurping on my watch.”
Peter looks around him to make sure there’s no enemies in his immediate vicinity, then takes in a deliberately noisy breath and holds it.
“Stop that, Peter, you knew what I meant,” Ms Natasha says.
Peter breathes out. “You’re no fun,” he pouts.
“These enemies are disturbingly easy to fight,” Ms Natasha says as she takes out four more of them with one move. “And I don’t even know if they’re capable of doing damage to us.”
“I certainly haven’t gotten hurt,” Peter says in agreement.
“That means nothing. You could be bleeding out, well on your way to death, and still say that,” Ms Natasha says.
“She’s got you there, kid,” Mr Stark says.
“Mr Stark! Have you figured anything out?”
“Yeah, this thing seems to be mostly electricity, so if I chuck a big enough insulator through it that should take care of things.”
“You’re just gonna throw some rubber through it?” Peter asks, somewhat incredulously.
“More or less.”
“Science is a scam,” Natasha says, running past with a large pole she’s using to decapitate blobs.
“You don’t mean that,” Peter says.
“Prove it.”
Peter opens his mouth and closes it a few times. “You know what, maybe I will. You don’t know.” Then he spots another clump of blobs and runs off to take them out before Ms Natasha can get to them. It’s so satisfying to make them disappear into nothing, and he has a feeling that their time here is numbered, so he wants to destroy as many as he can while he still can.
As he settles back into the fight, he can hear the distant sound of the Iron Man thrusters fading away into the distance. They’re gone for a short time, and Peter has taken out several clusters of blobs before the thrusters are coming back. He looks up and sees that Mr Stark is holding a massive ball of something that’s black.
“What the hell is that?” Peter asks.
“Oh, nothing,” Mr Stark says lightly.
“It’s rubber, right?” Peter says, thinking out loud. “There’s a lot of whatever that is… did you strip a running track?”
“I did,” Mr Stark says approvingly. “That was well deduced.”
Peter falls silent. “Did you really fly all the way to take Midtown’s track specifically?”
Mr Stark bursts into laughter, and Ms Natasha joins him moments later.
“I’m not even sure how I feel about that. I hate gym class, so a part of me is definitely pleased about this development, but on the other hand we were targeted for theft… I don’t know. I’m torn.”
“Torn like your track was!” Ms Natasha crows.
“Okay, now I’m mad about it,” Peter says. “That wasn’t even a good joke. That was just— It was embarrassing. I expect better from my fellow spider.”
“Be mad about it later,” Mr Stark says. “I need you to get on top of one of these buildings to catch the ball before it hits the ground and breaks something.”
“Now sure would be a handy time for me to be able to fly, would it not?” Peter mutters as he launches a web and swings into the air, headed for the building that Karen has highlighted for him.
“Spider traitor,” Natasha says.
Peter sighs. He bounces forward a bit, readying himself to move quickly and locking his eyes on the massive ball of rubber that Mr Stark is holding. “I’m ready when you are.”
“I’ll throw it on three, okay?”
“Okay.”
“One. Two. Three.”
The ball flies through the air, right through the portal. And the moment it makes contact, the portal winks out of existence. In its place is the massive cloud of purple energy-goo that had been coming out of the portal, but Peter has to rip his eyes away from it so he can catch the rubber. Mr Stark’s toss was perfect, so it’s trivial for Peter to reach up and pluck it out of the air, despite the gargantuan size of the ball.
“Hey, Mr Stark! We just played catch!” Peter says, making his way to the edge of the building.
“We sure did, kid,” Mr Stark says, but his voice is a bit distracted. He must be checking out that cloud.
Peter makes quick work of bringing the rubber ball to the ground. He sets it down in a small park, and it doesn’t even look that out of place. It could easily be an art installation that MJ would love and that he would not understand in the slightest. He notices that all the blobs that were roaming the streets have disappeared. Then he looks up and stares at the now-disconnected cloud of purple goo. He looks at the shape of the thing, the size. Squints at the way light travels through it. A plan forms.
“I’ve got an idea,” Peter shouts, still staring at the goo.
“No!” Mr Stark shouts, “you do not have an idea. I expressly forbid you from having ideas.”
Peter looks around and spots a likely looking building to use. He switches to a private audio channel with Karen. “Hey Karen, think I can slingshot off that building and land above the floating goo?”
“Yes, that is indeed possible. I have to remind you that we have no idea what contact with the unresolved goo will do to you. Perhaps you should wait for Iron Man—”
“No can do, Karen,” Peter says, already doing the mental calculations necessary to make the leap.
“What is your plan once you’re above the goo?” Karen asks.
“I’m going to deploy my parachute and gather up as much of it as I can,” Peter says. “It’s gonna be great!” With that, Peter aims his webshooters and launches himself into the air. His calculations are perfect and he’s going to land far enough over the goo that he can deploy his parachute, cut the strings, and get out of the way so the parachute can wrap around the goo without him making contact with the stuff. As he’s flying through the air, though, he realizes he forgot to account for one important thing.
Iron Man.
“Mr Iron Man, what are you doing?” Peter asks nervously, eyeing the rapidly approaching armor with dismay. “I have a plan.”
“Yeah, and I can see that it’s a bad, reckless plan, so I’m putting a stop to it,” Mr Stark says, sounding panicked and accelerating even faster.
“It’s a good, well-thought out plan!” Peter protests, but it’s too late for his plan because Mr Stark has already caught him mid-air and changed their trajectory— right into the cloud of goo.
“Shit,” Mr Stark says, as they enter the goo-zone.
“I wasn’t even going to touch the stuff, oh my god this feels so weird,” Peter says, squirming around between the arms of the suit. “Wait, maybe we shouldn’t be breathing this stuff.”
“Shit,” Mr Stark repeats.
“Well, I guess it’s too late now,” Peter says. “You should totally deploy your parachute though. I was gonna do mine, but someone decided to ruin my perfectly good plan.”
There’s a moment of silence. “You were going to use your parachute to scoop up the goo.”
“Yup.”
Mr Stark sighs. “That still would have been dangerous, but—” they shoot upwards so they’re just above the goo and the parachute deploys. Peter flicks off bits of purple goo that are clinging to him and the Iron Man armor. Mr Stark severs the cords, then flies out from under the parachute. The parachute lands on the goo, which is apparently dense enough to support the weight of the parachute while still floating in mid-air. “That makes things easy.”
Peter sighs and scrambles around the suit so he’s clinging to Mr Stark’s back, piggy-back style. Together, they fly around, dodging crows, and tucking the parachute around the goo. The intervening time has left Peter feeling a bit… odd… but it’s probably just the strangeness of the day. Definitely not that weird gaseous goo he was breathing earlier.
“We should leave it on Mr Dr Strange’s roof,” Peter says. “This seems like his kinda thing.”
“I think Bruce is just as likely to know what’s going on with it, if not more likely. This is clearly alien shit,” Mr Stark says.
“But Mr Dr Banner is definitely away helping with an important study. We know why he wasn’t here to help. Who knows why Mr Dr Strange didn’t answer your calls. Also, Mr Dr Banner lives at the tower, and I don’t think you want the goo on your own roof.”
“You make some truly excellent points,” Mr Stark says. He changes their flight trajectory so they’re headed towards the Sanctum Sanctorum.
Peter glances down at the open top of their massive parachute-bag of goo. “I’m gonna climb down and web this bag closed.”
Mr Stark sighs. “Be careful, kid. We’ve already breathed in enough of that stuff.”
“And whose fault was that?” Peter asks rhetorically.
There’s no response from Mr Stark, so Peter grins at his victory. He spins around so he’s facing down and starts to shoot a web at each of the cardinal points of the parachute. Then he gathers the four webs and reels them in so the parachute starts to close at the top.
“Nicely done.”
“Thanks!” Peter says. “We’ll need to be careful when we put it down on his roof, but it should be okay.”
They arrive in the airspace over the sanctum. They hover in mid-air for a moment.
“Are you ready for me to bring us down?” Mr Stark asks.
Peter nods, then verbalizes his agreement when he realizes Mr Stark can’t exactly see him. They spend a couple minutes maneuvering the bag of goo so it’s secure on the roof, then Peter steps down onto the roof next to the bag and takes off his mask, ready to relax for a moment before Mr Stark freaks out about the goo they were breathing. Mr Stark lands next to him on the roof, and Peter can hear the whirring that means the face mask is lifting.
“How are you feeling?” Mr Stark asks.
Peter looks up, opening his mouth to respond. He meets Mr Stark’s eyes and experiences the most severe vertigo he has ever felt in his life. He closes his eyes and is helpless to stop himself from falling to his knees, and then the rest of the way forward onto his stomach. He’s making a valiant effort to hang onto his lunch when just as suddenly as the vertigo struck, it passes.
Peter opens his eyes and he realizes immediately that something is terribly wrong. He goes to move, but is stopped by the armor he’s wearing. The Iron Man armor. Peter is in the Iron Man suit.
“What the fuck?” his voice says, but it wasn’t him, Peter, that chose to say it.
“I didn’t say that,” Peter says frantically, except it isn’t his voice, it’s Mr Stark’s.
“We must have…” Peter starts to say with the wrong voice.
“Swapped bodies,” Mr Stark finishes.