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It takes everything in Peter’s considerable well of willpower not to violently react when a big, meaty hand grabs him by the throat and pulls. Time slows as gray fingers with sharp, chipped nails clutch at him, and all he can see is the crowd in front of him, keen eyes watching his every move with horror etched into their faces. His own fingers twitch as he grounds the urge to fight back and instead goes limp in the Rhino’s vice-like grip.
This is not good, Peter thinks with a defeated sigh. He resigns himself to being a puppet for the giant rhino-man that is currently being cornered by the New York police department. He wishes, not for the first time, that he could just copy Tony and be done with it, do an “I am Spider-Man” for the press, but he won’t dare risk Aunt May’s life like that. So, he puts on his weak little Peter Parker mask and stares balefully at the approaching cops with wide, innocent eyes. The hand around his neck tightens. If he were a baseline human, he’d be wheezing and choking on his own vocal cords. It's a good thing Peter's not a baseline human.
“One step closer and the boy gets it!” The Rhino snarls, his Russian accent picking at his words like a persnickety crow. It’s rather stereotypical of him, Peter thinks, the threat. “I will turn him into pulp if you dare hurt the Rhino!”
This is a new one, he admits. He’s never been taken hostage as his civilian identity before. His hero identity gets grabbed all the time by the various villains of the week, but as Spider-Man he’s able to use his strength to overpower them when that happens. Now, he’s just Peter Parker, a baseline human with a horrible immune system and the current hostage of the Rhino. Well, there’s a first time for everything!
Stay limp , he repeats in his head like a mantra as Rhino waves him around like a piñata on a rope. Don’t fight back. You’ve got this, Underoos. Just pretend Hulk is keeping you as his puppy again. Oh, that was a fun day. Maybe we could do it again someti--
Peter yelps as the Rhino jerks him up and forwards, shielding his bulk with Peter’s lithe frame. What does he think that will accomplish? Seriously. No, wait, the cops are backing up. Oh boy. Okay. Seems like he’s either gotta wait for real help to arrive or do everything himself. He sighs, trying to keep the defeat off his face. This is already boring. How can he get out of this without giving away his secret identity? That is the million dollar question. A very stupid idea pops into his head like magic. A truly bad idea. Really, he doesn’t know what he’s thinking. It probably comes from the same place that has him throw out quips in the middle of fighting as Spider-Man, the same place that has to make jokes when his life is in danger. Against his better judgment (and his pride…), Peter grabs hold of that idea and pulls the thread until the idea is fully formed in his head.
Tony’s gonna kill me, he thinks to himself. It’s hard to keep from smiling at what he’s about to do.
“Um, Mr. Rhino, sir?” His voice squeaks like a prepubescent teen as he tries to get the words out from within the Rhino’s constricting grip without coughing or giving away his mutate invulnerability.
There’s a moment of shocked silence from the mammoth of a man with thick, gray, hardened skin.
“Shut up, brat,” the Rhino hisses viciously, pulling Peter in like a ragdoll to speak quietly into his ear. It must look pretty menacing, because a collective gasp goes up amongst the crowd behind the police barriers.
“I just-- if you shake me, it’ll look better for the cops,” Peter manages to squeak out.
He’s really banking on the Rhino not knowing what kind of pressure a baseline human can stand before their neck snaps. Maybe this is a bad idea. But, Peter’s bones aren’t as fragile as they used to be. They can bend a lot more before breaking these days.
He can somehow feel the confusion that must be painted across the Rhino’s expression. The man tightens his grip.
Here we go.
Playing a punching bag for a giant villain is not fun. The Rhino shakes Peter back and forth with a bit too much strength for a baseline human to survive, but Peter just takes it and gives a terrified scream for his audience, contorting his face in his best estimate of fear. The Rhino swings him around, using the momentum to inch closer and closer to a nearby green space.
“Take me as a hostage and drop me in the bushes somewhere,” Peter whispers out of one side of his mouth on his next swing when he’s closer to the Rhino’s face. “I’ll draw their attention so you can get away.”
“Who the hell are you, boy?” the Rhino hisses back, but he’s already pivoting towards the park at his back and holding Peter up in front of him as a flimsy barrier between him and the waiting police.
“A concerned citizen,” Peter huffs breathlessly. Even with his mutation, it’s starting to get a little hard to breathe around the hand on his throat. But hey, he learned how to bluff from the Black Widow herself, so he pushes through it. “I’m writing my thesis on nonviolent conflict resolution--”
He gets cut off by a spray of bullets that hit the ground near the Rhino’s feet. He scoffs. Is he not good enough leverage for the cops to hold their fire? Ungrateful little foot soldiers. Maybe he’s getting too into the role.
“Rude,” he mutters. By the way the Rhino’s face twitches as he sprints across the green space, he’s been heard. “Can’t they see that you have a hostage?”
“You are a strange one,” the Rhino says, his accent as thick as a marsh. “What is your name, little twig?”
Okay, now that’s rude. Twig? He’s lithe, wiry. Wiry!
“I’m Peter. Are you gonna escape now? I have a whole speech planned for the cops about how you’re gonna flee to the docks and hop on a boat before it leaves. I’ve been practicing it since we started running, man.”
He is unceremoniously thrown into a bush. He lands with a muffled thud and rolls over with a groan to see a hulking figure disappear into an alleyway. He has no idea how the Rhino can just disappear like that. He’s huge! But he manages it.
The police come running to help Peter out of the bush.
It’s showtime.
An odd quirk of his mutation, Peter learned a long time ago (after a situation involving Deadpool and a fish), is that sometimes, if he focuses very strongly on it, he can slow down his healing factor enough to keep his bruises from fading as quickly as they want to. He does this now to keep the palm-shaped bruising pattern on his neck, from ear to ear. The Rhino has huge hands.
The paramedics are waiting for him back at the deconstructed police barricade. The police are busy chasing the Rhino. Subtly, with a voice that is purposefully croaky, he mumbles something about the docks to the officer that’s escorting him to the ambulances. He gets a shock blanket and an oxygen mask as the paramedics check to see if he's broken anything. He squints in concentration, focusing as hard as he can to keep his bruises from fading. Just a little longer. The police have called his emergency contact. Since Aunt May is at work and Tony is probably out there cleaning up the Rhino’s mess after all those cameras caught sight of Peter, it’s a tossup of people that could come and get him.
It’s not long before a blonde woman dressed in lots of layered clothing and a beanie approaches the slowly-dissolving barricade. She makes noise about seeing her nephew, and the police let her through. Her eyes are appropriately teary and horrified when she sees Peter at the back of an ambulance.
“Good work, kid,” the blonde says with a tilted smirk when the paramedics leave them to themselves. Peter smiles back. He recognizes that voice and the heartbeat from beneath the knitted sweater.
“Thanks, Natalie,” he shoots back. “I learned from the best, didn’t I?”
Natasha looks proud. He cherishes it. She helps him out of the ambulance, handing the shock blanket to a nearby police officer, and over to the car she clearly stole from somewhere Peter doesn’t want to know.
“Tony wishes he could come,” Natasha says under her breath, when she’s sure only Peter’s enhanced senses will pick it up, “but he can’t be seen with your civilian identity while the media are still swarming.”
Peter shrugs. “I get it. I just want to get out of here.”
“That,” she says, “we can do.”
Once he’s safely squared away in the 'mom car' that Natasha’s stolen, he relaxes and lets his enhanced healing kick in to get rid of the bruises and scratches he picked up from the Rhino and the bush he landed in so unceremoniously. Natasha kicks the car into high gear, and they’re racing out of there before the media vultures can get any closer and see the license plate.
“You saw the whole thing?” he asks absently, adjusting his backpack comfortably between his feet. It had fallen where the Rhino had grabbed him. A very nice man with a clean mustache kept it safe while Peter was indisposed.
“Yep,” Natasha confirms. Her driving wouldn’t be out of place on a racing track with how fast she’s going, but Peter knows she can handle it, so he doesn’t worry much. “Tony alerted us as soon as the cameras caught your face in the background of their coverage on the Rhino. Clint read your lips and gave us the transcript after everything really kicked off.”
Her eyes, filled with mirth, dart over to him quickly.
“Your ‘thesis,’ Peter? You barely look old enough to be in college.”
Peter sputters and protests, but a smile creeps through his masks anyway. He laughs and leans back into his seat. “I thought it was clever. Who are you impersonating today, anyway? You look like a cat woman.”
“It was clever.” Natasha shrugs an elegant shoulder, though the effect is overridden by the knitted sweater and beanie. “Though you could have done without giving him your real name. Steve wasn’t at all happy about that. Neither was Tony.”
Peter grimaces. Yeah. That probably wasn’t the smartest move. But what’s done is done, right? Besides, the Rhino probably won’t even remember his own name by the time Iron Man is through with him. Tony can’t be happy about the man taking a kid hostage, even if it was just Peter. Especially because it was Peter.
Yeah, he’ll be fine. It’s not like this will happen again, right? Nah. He's good.