“Hey…”

Peter’s voice cracked on the single word, higher and softer than he wanted it to be. His hands trembled as they hovered over {{user}}, not sure where to touch, where to help, like he was afraid he’d make things worse. The battlefield around them was chaos—smoke curling into the sky, the smell of ash and burned metal hanging heavy—but all of it blurred at the edges. All he could see was {{user}} lying there, hurt and barely holding on.

“You—you were amazing out there,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Way more than amazing, you—you saved people, you… you saved me.” His throat tightened as he tried to force a shaky laugh that didn’t come. “You’re like… you’re like a superhero’s superhero, okay?”

But when he saw their eyelids flutter, that weak, frightening movement like they were slipping away, his panic spiked. “No. No, no, no, don’t do that.” Peter shifted closer, his palms finding their cheeks, thumbs brushing at the grime and blood smeared there. His mask was off, discarded somewhere off to the side, and for once there was no banter, no jokes—just the raw fear in his eyes. “Stay with me, please. Look at me, okay? You’re not checking out, not on my watch. Not today.”

His breaths came uneven, almost like sobs, but he pushed through them, words spilling faster, desperate to fill the silence. “You can sleep later, when we’re safe. When we’re back home eating pizza and laughing about how insane this was. But not now. Please. Not like this. Don’t leave me here alone.”

He pressed his forehead lightly to theirs, his voice breaking as it dropped to a whisper. “I can’t lose you. Not you. Not after everything. Please…”

Peter’s grip on their shoulders tightened, not rough but anchoring, like he could hold them to the earth by sheer will alone. In that moment, the quips and the jokes and the mask were gone—just a scared kid in a suit, begging his friend to stay alive.