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Honestly, Peter had woken up with a headache.
No, wait. If to be perfectly honest, Peter had rolled out of bed with a headache; he had pulled a third all-nighter in a row, so… yeah, he hadn’t woken up with a headache, it had just kinda persisted through the day, and night, and then into the morning.
And then, after a long day of school (he had nailed that chemistry quiz, Mr. Stark), Peter decided that, instead of sleeping or something, or even, y'know, eating something (sorry Mr. Stark, but he had to skip breakfast because he needed to take a Spanish quiz and then he had to skip lunch because he needed to finish his long-ass chemistry lab quiz), he would just go straight to patrolling.
Some people wonder how he has such a high IQ when he is obviously so incredibly stupid.
But anyways, yeah. So Peter had a headache, and he was tired. And now a little hungry, too. But who was gonna stop those muggers? It certainly wasn’t Butterfly-Man or some other buggy-themed superhero.
“Spiders are arachnids,” Peter muttered to himself, swinging into the nearest mugger.
“Aye! Whatcha say, Spider-Man?” the next mugger yelled. “We don’t care that spiders are arachnids, we just care-“
“About my fist in your face?” he said as he punched two at once. “Well, guess what… I don’t care that you’re muggers, I’m just hungry.”
“How about you chew-“
Peter’s spidey-sense tingled a little… right or left? Right or left…? He ducked to the right, caught the fist, and finished the bad guy’s sentence, “-on a knuckle sandwich?” with a knockout right in the nose.
The two boys that Peter had saved hurriedly thanked him, and one offered him a sandwich in gratitude.
“Hey, thanks, kid,” said Peter, as he swung away to the nearest rooftop to it his reward. But it wasn’t really a swing… more like a try-to-pull-himself-up-without-passing-out.
And as he got to the top of the skyscraper, once he had pulled himself up completely, the skyscraper swayed beneath his feet.
“Peter,” Karen said, “this is the third time I have warned you that your temperature has risen. If it gets above 104°F, I will have to contact Mr. Stark.”
Breathing heavily, Peter ripped his mask from his face. “Karen, this is the first time you’ve warned me of this.” He waited a beat, and then swore, putting his mask back on. “I mean, Karen, this is the first time you’ve warned me.”
“No, Peter, it’s the third,” Karen sighed. “I think your sleep deprivation and general sickness might be affecting your hearing and/or your cognitive retention.”
Peter waited another beat, his head beginning to swim as much as the roof beneath him, and decided that he didn’t know what Karen was talking about. Also, he was tired. Very tired. So tired, and warm. Kinda warm, almost… hot?
“Peter!” Karen called, slightly agitated now. “You now have a 106°F fever! I need to contact Mr. Stark!”
“Nah, I’m fine Karen. Don’... don’ tell Mssr St’rk anyyyyy… anything, m’kay? ‘Kay. Imma go an’ take a nappy-pie now, ‘kay?”
Peter swayed over to the edge of the rooftop, leaning over the side to gauge the distance between his building and the next one. He narrowed his eyes, concentrating, and shot a web over the chasm. And then another web. And a third, and a fourth… and on and on until, suddenly, Peter was looking at a very nice hammock. He smiled to himself, and then crawled over the beginning strands to reach the middle. His stomach dropped as he got to the center, because his weight made the hammock dip precariously.
“Karen…” he muttered, “warn me if… if somethin’ weird happens, ‘kay?” And without waiting for a response, after nearly eighty straight hours, Peter fell asleep.
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“Peter! Peter, come here! There’s some sort of weird black thing and it’s barely contained in the beaker, even with the stopper on! Come to the lab quick!”
At the sound of Shuri’s voice, Peter leapt off the couch and ran straight to the lab where she was. The sight that greeted him was shocking, to say the least. A large, black… thing was punching at the walls of a beaker, as Shuri had said.
Peter rushed over to her to take the beaker from her hands, but in doing so, the two teens both lost their grip and the beaker shattered, releasing the gooey black thing, along with a cloud of smoke.
“AHHHHH!” the two screamed, running out of the lab, slamming the door behind them.
“At least we got out,” Peter breathed.
Shuri didn’t share his relief: she stared at his hand, and when she pointed, he looked as well, and gasped.
“What… Shuri, what…”
The black thing started to engulf Peter’s hand, and started to move up his arm.
“Peter! PETER! PETER, WAKE UP!”
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Peter jolted awake, but not really… there wasn’t much jolting he could do from over 500 feet in air, free-falling.
“Peter!”
He realized that the voice must be Tony Stark, as he could see a red blur zipping towards him, coming up and catching him. Peter groaned, as Tony’s arms had jolted his entire body and made him feel so much worse.
“Petey, buddy, you fell out of your hammock! Did you have a nightmare or something? I could barely get to you in time! Karen had called me because of your fever, but-”
Karen’s refreshingly calm voice broke in, “Peter! Your fever has gone down to 105°F, but medical attention is still advised. You also have extremely low blood sugar and the neurons in your brain have been greatly slowed down. Have you eaten anything today or slept since you last patrolled?”
Peter sighed noncommittally, and started to slur worse than a drunk on his tenth bottle of beer. “Karennnnn, I ate a sandwich. I don’t know why, but… bu’ I got one. And I just slept for some time, that’s good enough.”
Aghast, Tony ripped off Peter’s mask, and said, “Peter, you know your metabolism! You should be eating way more! And wait, when was the last time you slept? Peter? Mr. Parker?”
Peter didn’t hear Tony though, he was too busy trying to control his unruly stomach. Or was it his head that hurt? And he was getting all hot again.
“Hot damn. Call the po -lice and the fire -man,” he sang to himself, before his eyes rolled to the back of his head.
“Kid, what are you say- what the fuck?” Tony gasped. “FRIDAY! Tell Bruce to prep the medbay for Mr. Parker!”
“Sure thing, boss. But Dr. Banner isn’t in right now, he is in lower Manhattan, ‘hulking out,’ as you call it.”
“Dammit! Who’s in medical right now?”
“The princess of Wakanda is present, I’ll patch her through to you.”
“Shuri? I guess she can probably do something… her specialty might just be surgeries though, I’m not sure…”
“Mr. Stark!” Shuri’s vociferous tones interrupted Tony’s verbal musings. “I can do many things, not just surgery! That just happens to be all that you’ve ever seen me do.”
“Do, coo, you, roo,” Peter said suddenly.
“Peter! What…?”
“What, cut, rut, mutt…”
“Is that Peter I hear?” Shuri asked. “What’s wrong with him? Tell me his symptoms.”
“Yes, that’s Peter. He has a very high fever, he hasn’t eaten or slept in awhile, I can’t imagine he’s had much water, either, and he might be feeling nauseous as well,” said Tony, trying to talk over Peter’s rhymes and singing to Shuri’s ‘hear:’ “dear, clear, mere, near… far, where-EV-er you are…”
“Oh, kiddo,” Tony murmured. He finally touched down on the landing bay of Stark Tower, and quickly ran Peter inside. “It’s gonna be okay, buddy. It’ll be alright.”
“Yes, it will,” said Shuri, wheeling a gurney up to the two figures and taking Peter from Tony’s arms. “Now that I can take care of Teenage Mutant Ninja Spider, maybe he will actually start taking care of himself for once.”
“Once, dunce…”
Shuri laughed without mirth, placing him on one of the beds in the med-bay. “Oh, I would call you more than a dunce, white boy… dick, douche…”
Tony gave her a look of horror. “He’s sick! You can’t call him names when he’s sick!”
“I can call Peter anything I want, he was stupid enough to get sick when Bruce wasn’t here to baby him!”
As the fluid from the IV Shuri stuck in Peter’s arm started to flow through his system, Peter’s eyes shot open.
“SICK! TICK! CLICK! DICK!”
“Ah, yes,” Shuri barked a laugh at Tony’s look of shock, at both Peter’s sudden alertness and his choice of rhymes. “See, even he thinks he’s a dick!”
“What? Dick? What the… what am I doing in here?” Peter questioned, starting to pull tubes out of his hands and arms.
“Woah, woah, woah, partner,” Tony cautioned, gently easing Peter back onto the bed. “You still have a 104°F fever, mister. Sit back down.”
“Nah, Mr. Stark, I’m good, I’m- oh, shit!” Peter yelled, as he pushed Tony’s arms off of him and tried to stand, immediately falling back onto the bed with a thud.
“Your blood sugar is also low, silly,” called Shuri from where she was monitoring his vitals. “You need rest and food, not crime-fighting.”
Peter glared at Shuri and Tony, and then laid back down on the bed, closing his eyes. “Fine,” he grumbled.
Tony and Shuri looked at each other, as in, that was easier that we thought it would be . But what they didn’t know was that that had been Peter’s half-cooked, fevered plan all along. When they left the room five minutes later to let him rest, Peter creaked open one eye, and then the other. And then he slowly eased himself up, and moved to the edge of the bed. And stood. And walked over to the window. And swung away to go help some random person who needed helping.
Or at least, that was the plan, which didn’t happen. Because the second Peter stood up, his eyes rolled back in his head for the second time that day and he crumpled to the floor, hitting his forehead on first the headboard and then the frame of the hospital bed.
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Tony sat at the foot of Peter’s bed, watching the teenager sleep. He had so many tubes coming out of his arms, for food, water, general medicine… to be honest, Tony didn’t actually know what any of them really had in them. Peter also had a white bandage around his head, covering the gash that had probably already disappeared from his fall before.
Tony sighed, wishing the young superhero would just learn to take a sick day every once in a while. It would make days like this, days spent watching him in a medical bed, so much more infrequent, which would make Tony so much happier. And stress free.
Peter sighed, interrupting Tony’s thoughts (and sighs).
“I suppose I’m in trouble again?”
“No, kid, not yet. You’re not well enough to handle the scolding I’m going to give you. But, Pete, listen. Please. You gotta learn when to pull back a bit. Okay? You can’t scare me like this. Or Shuri.”
“Shuri? What do you mean, ‘Shuri?’ Wasn’t Dr. Banner taking care of me?”
Tony gave the boy a sidelong glance. “No, Shuri was the only one available; Bruce was busy hulking. Why would you say it was him?”
Peter’s cheeks grew red, and for a second Tony thought his fever was coming back, until he said, “Oh. Well, it’s just… it’s just that… Dr. Banner has really, really soft hands and… and I have vague memories of… of hands just brushing my arm, up and down.”
Now it was Tony’s turn to grow embarrassed. “Ah. Yes, Shuri said that by rubbing your arms, the fluid would move faster through your veins. I… I was the one…”
Peter turned even redder, glancing out the window to try to avoid the awkwardness of the moment, as he said in a small voice, “Oh.”
Tony got up to leave, but Peter’s voice called him back.
“Wait.”
Tony looked at the kid, the unspoken words on his lips, and moved back to sit on the edge of his bed.
“Always,” he murmured, giving his surrogate son a hug. Peter leaned into him, becoming dead weight as exhaustion overtook him yet again.
Tony shifted to make himself more comfortable, and then settled in for the long haul - a little nap with the boy who was so much more than just a superhero to him.