Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Spider Frostbites

Spooktober 28: Rescue

It should be first explained that sometimes, MJ liked to sit on her fire escape and do her homework, or maybe cozy up with a book. This was difficult during the colder months, when autumn was turning towards its middle, leaving a chill in the air and the promise of late October rain.

Nevertheless, MJ had gone to the library earlier this week, and bundled in enough sweaters, she could forget the cold enough to become easily immersed in her Jane Austen novel. She pretended the cigarette smoke she smelt from the open window above her were actually puffs from old-fashioned tobacco piles, and made do with the rest.

As she turned a page of her book, leafy and stained yellow from years of library use, a flash of red swerving past her peripheral caused her attention to snap up. Peter served past her, landing roughly on the wall. He clung with the tips of his gloved fingers and the toe of his boots, breathing harshly.

"MJ," he wheezed, and she blinked a few times in alarm before slamming her book closed and pulling him onto the fire escape. Peter didn't sound right. She's gone swinging with him before, and even then he had never been this out-of-breath when he'd landed— she'd always been the one gasping for air.

"What happened?" She asked quickly. Her mind spun for possibilities, foes that Peter had put away that may have come back, something having happened to Ned, to May, to Peter himself.

Peter coughed harshly, tilting his head back. It hit the brick of the wall with a thud. "Ugh."

"Peter?" She asked again, hurried, her hands coming up to hold his masked face. He was frozen to the touch, nearly hypothermic, just— just ice. She cursed and wrenched her window fully open. "Did someone do this to you?"

Peter didn't respond. He slowly sank to the side, slumping over himself limply.

MJ made a panicked, flustered noise, quickly going to stabilize him. Her heart was pounding, and she was suddenly very, very  distressed that Peter no longer was using a Stark suit.

(And she remembered how worried he'd been about it, too. How, between serving customers, she'd caught him doodling designs on the back of an essay guideline paper, how he'd gone red in the face, scratching the back of his neck with embarrassment as he guiltily rambled that he was just thinking about an upgrade that was his own...

"I just don't want to bother him anymore," Peter had explained. Powdered sugar over his top lip from his donut. "You know? 'Cuz he's like, retired, and... I don't know, I don't want to disappoint him."

She'd remembered saying firmly, her eyes soft, that she's sure Tony wouldn't mind at all, and that he was being stupid to worry so much.)

Now, hauling a freezing cold, sopping wet Peter Parker back into her bedroom, she can only think of like, one, maybe two things to do. After all, it felt like her brain was running in slow motion, a slurry of panic that she forced herself to fight through.

She first tried peeling the suit off. If Peter really was hypothermic, wet clothes were the worst thing for him. She'd watched enough documentaries and read enough books to know that. Peter remained unconscious as she catalogued with rapid succession the lack of (for once) stab wounds or bullets piercing his skin. However, his fingers and hands were pale, his lips were sort of blue, and he was covered head to toe in goosebumps.

She then checked his pulse. That was easily important. It took a few very long seconds of her moving her fingers around his wrist, frowning, shifting to his neck instead, frowning deeper, before the panic really began to set in.

"I have to be doing this wrong," she said shakily, finally pressing the palm of her hand hard against his chest and forcing her own breath to go still. Nothing. She couldn't feel anything.