Helpless

8: Tears Are Shed, Vows Are Due

A/N: I know the title is rubbish, I tried so hard (literally half an hour of staring at my screen)...

This has 4.4k views and 300+ votes?? I'm dying of joy?? Thank you :)

Also, I wanted to write fluff for the birthday of my favourite monster and this was honestly the fluffiest I could manage right now * sheepish grin * Sorry that you guys got it a day later...

Tony doesn't know what's happening.

He doesn't know if this is real or not but, right now, he couldn't care in the slightest.

To his utter shock, he'd woken up to see - actually see, which was surprising enough in itself - that he wasn't in the chair. He'd found himself slumped against the wall of what had looked like a communal shower, which is where he still is.

Except that most communal showers don't have flashing red lights and the dull echo of a siren, the combination of which is enough to drive anyone mad.

"Peter?" Tony calls, his voice hoarse. "Pete? Are you in here?"

When he gets no reply, he moves to stand up, then promptly cries out. Biting his tongue in case Peter is listening, he glances down at himself to see handcuffs around his wrists and blood seeping out from his left side.

The memory of waking up last time with little scars around his wrists that had reminded him of handcuffs hits him like a battering ram and he has to close his eyes for a minute, trying to accept that the events in his head are not the whole picture and that he'd probably been here before but he just can't remember it.

Only once he can place at least minimal trust in his mind does he silently thank their captors for handcuffing his hands in front of him before gently lifting his shirt to see an angry but uninfected red area of raw skin, maybe two inches across and still bleeding, which he knows to be a bullet graze.

Thankfully, it's not deep enough to immobilise him but it is burning almost fifty times as worse than when he'd tried alcohol for the first time.

Normally, he'd take his shirt off and wrap that around the wound to stop the bleeding but he can't, not with his hands handcuffed together and nothing in the vicinity that could help him pick the locks.

He takes a deep breath, grits his teeth, and awkwardly pulls himself up and rolls his body at the same time, ending up on his knees, breathless. After ten seconds of recovering, he kneels up, clutching the wall for support, sweat trickling down the side of his face from the effort. Another ten seconds and then he's lifting a leg, kneeling down on one knee, and then shakily standing up, immediately leaning on the wall and shutting his eyes, his side screaming at him to sit back down.

"Pete?" Tony calls again, his voice weak but his determination strong. "Pete, please, please tell me you're in here..."

When he gets no reply, he sighs and presses his hands against his bleeding wound, starting to walk. He almost collapses after the very first step, barely managing to avoid a strong encounter with the floor, but stumbles his way deeper into the room, avoiding the closed door behind him and heading to the ajar one.

"Peter..." Tony breathes, trying not to focus on the sickeningly wet feeling of blood between his fingers.

He practically falls onto the door, groaning when it slides open with ease and makes him crash into the wall. That hurts, it hurts so much, but he knows Peter had been in more pain almost all the time so he sucks in a breath and pushes down the agony.