Outnumbered

Chapter 15

Peter can feel the drop before Karen alerts him. It starts as a slight headache, a fuzziness at the edges of his vision, before it spreads through his body and makes him feel like he's swimming in molasses. He's swinging from building to building, trying to create a web blockade between 42nd and 7th, but as he shoots a new string of web out, it misses its intended target, leaves him tumbling headfirst and ass up until he finally gets haphazard spurts of his webbing to latch on to a fire escape.

He ends up suspended, swinging between two close buildings and asks Karen to find somewhere safe for him to sit and get himself back on track.

"You have a fall rate notification," Karen reads to Peter, who can only huff because as great as technology is, it's always delayed. He needed that alarm ten minutes ago to beat this. "You are currently at 65 mg/dL and dropping at 3 mg/dL per minute." Low, but not too low. It's the drop, he knows, that's really doing him in. He was 180 and rising when they started the battle.

His basal, which has probably just started to pause, coupled with his intense exercise, is making him go low.

"Fuck," Peter grumbles, straining his muscles and webshooters to get him up to the nearest roof, which Karen has identified as a suitable spot. He launches himself with all of the energy he can muster, rolls to a stop belly-up atop a nearby building, and lies there, taking an inventory of his body as his head pounds.

"Urgent low soon, 55 mg/dL in 20 minutes," Karen chimes.

"Pete, FRIDAY's sending me Dex alarms. You okay?" Tony's asking through the comms. He's masking his panic, doesn't want Peter to know how concerned he truly is, but Peter can hear him panting and receiving hits to his suit, and the sounds are causing his senses to overload.

"I-I'm dropping," Peter says, his arms suddenly heavy as he tries to get his fingers working so that he can pull his pump through the neck hole of his suit. He knows he needs a glucose tab and to make sure his pump has caught up with Dexcom, but he can't seem to control his muscles. He gets a grip on it only for it to slip back into the pocket inside the chest of his suit. He tries again but his muscles burn and his hands begin to shake. His arms drop in defeat and he whines. "Can't get to it. Too shaky. I'm...I'm not okay, Tony."

"Shit, I can't get to you, kid," Tony says. "FRIDAY-

"I've already alerted members of the team," FRIDAY chimes. "Help will be with you shortly, Peter."

"Dex says you're 60 with double down arrows. Glucose tabs, kiddo. Now!"

"Tryin' but I'm...this one's bad, Tony." Peter tries to grab the few stashed in a compartment in his suit but his fingers just won't cooperate. He sniffles back tears, doesn't want to cry on the comms because he knows everyone is listening.

"I know. Hang in there, Peter. I'm gonna try and get to you, okay?"

"Head hurts."

"Gotta stay awake for me. FRIDAY, stop insulin on Peter's pump."

"Unable to connect to Peter's pump," FRIDAY relays.

"Shit."

X

"Hey, kid," he hears Steve say sometime later, and while it feels like hours, he knows it's probably only been a few minutes. He's being lifted into a sitting position against a wall and there's a straw at his lips. He tries to hold it himself, but Peter's hand starts shaking so wildly that he can't keep the straw in his mouth, so Steve holds it while Peter sips and tries to focus on blocking out how overwhelming all of the sounds of the city at war and feelings in his body are.

"M-my pump," Peter says when he's finished the juice box, shaking fingers going for the device beneath his suit. "Gotta...see if my pump stopped..." He watches Steve pry his fingers away from the collar of his suit, feels him stretch the material to grab it from its hidden pocket in his chest plate and pull it up and out, tubing and all.