Lost in Translation

"Holy Shit"

It'd been a week and a half now. He was still staying with Ned, just going home during May's shift so he could grab fresh clothes.

Ned had taken it all pretty well, actually. The whole SHIELD agent thing was surprising, of course, but Ned mostly just wanted to see Peter's standard issue knives and his thigh holster and if he could hit a moving target. Which, of course, he could.

"This is the coolest thing I've ever seen," Ned had whispered, eyes blown wide when Peter hit a moving target 3 times in a row.

The one thing Ned had been absolutely floored by was Peter's spider DNA. He'd asked all sorts of questions, even asking for a sample of blood to analyze. Leave it to the STEM kid to ask for his best friend's blood sample.

Peter had been more than happy to help. He'd held out his hand like it was nothing and cut into a fingertip, squeezing out a few drops for his friend to hastily collect.

And in return, Ned, never even a slight bit queasy, had jumped right into the job of patching Peter up when he got hurt, which was more frequent that you might think.

That's why when Peter swung into a mugging and got himself shot in the leg, he shook it off, swung back to Ned's house, and stumbled to the en suite, leaving a very startled, very stressed out Ned in his room. Peter disappeared into the bathroom and Ned took a second ot process what just happened. He was still caught off guard when Peter got hurt, even after a week of patching him up. After a moment, he got up and stumbled into the bathroom after Peter.

"Ned, do you know how to remove bullets?" Peter was holding a wet washcloth to his leg, examining the wound as best he could from the angle he was at.

Ned's face had paled, staring at all the blood. "No, why would I know how to remove bullets?"

Peter shrugged. "I'm very accustomed to people knowing how to do that."

"Well I don't!"

Peter screwed his eyes shut, his head beginning to pound from the pain and the lights and the noise of Ned's yelling.

"Пожалуйста, соблюдайте тишину." (Translation: Please, be quiet)

Ned rolled his eyes. "Okay, Mr. Secret Spy, remember that I'm a pleb and I don't know Russian."

"Please, be quiet," Peter whispered, hands slipping over his ears. He knew he had a sensory overload coming soon. They were rare, especially after so many years as an agent and working with guns and all that, but when he was in a lot of pain, like now, it was easy to let heightened senses take over.

"Peter," Ned whispered, kneeling in front of his friend. "How can I help?"

Peter gestured to the medicine cabinet, barely moving his hand away from his head before pressing it back to his ear. Ned took the hint, grabbing a bottle of pills Peter had from Fury. It was some super-charged pain medication, like Tylenol on steroids. Ned poured 2 into his palm and passed them to Peter, who dry swallowed them and almost instantly felt relief wash over his body.

"Thanks."

Ned nodded. "It's no problem."

Peter looked down at his leg. If it weren't for the angle of the wound, he could have gotten the bullet himself, but where it was, tucked behind his thigh, just out of reach, he was almost sure to make things worse if he went poking around.

"Can you walk me through it?" Ned asked hopefully.

"No," Peter sighed. "I would if it were anywhere else, but if you nick one of the femoral veins or arteries, I'll bleed out in a minute and you'll be scared for life."