Chapter Text
The cold bit into his skin and devoured all of the remaining warmth. Peter felt like he was dying. It was a regular showing morning in New York but today felt colder than any others. His hair was close to having frosted ends and his breath could be seen in the air. He was sleepier than usual too, as soon as he woke up he was sluggish even after coffee. He stumbled into school at the normal time and slumped in his seat once he got there.
Peter had an hour before he had to get up again and he was taking advantage of it. He rested his head on his palm and lazily took out his book. Once the teacher began the lesson, he took notes down that probably looked like scribbles.
It was around half an hour later, when Ned was chatting eagerly in his ear and Michelle was rolling her eyes, that his head hit the desk with a bang that should have woken him.
“Mr Parker! I suggest you begin listening or you’ll be staying after school!” the teacher bellowed and Ned poked his arm to wake him up.
“C'mon dude, not funny. Wake up time!” Ned continued poking and prodding him to wake him up with no prevail.
“He’s not waking up, sir,” the teacher turned with rage but seemed to sober up when he realised that wasn’t just a student falling asleep.
“Someone get the school nurse!” Two students, Sally and Cindy left quickly and came back a few minutes later.
Meanwhile, the other teens watched their class mate with concern, this had never happened and they were panicking. The nurse did the normal things, checking his pulse, air ways and then asked Ned to help get him to the Nurse Office bed.
When she finally came round to checking his temperature though, she had almost fainted at the sight. It was at 90° F, a catastrophically low temperature for anyone.
“He should be dead!” she whispered under her breath and alerted the other witnesses to call an ambulance, his guardians and the principle.
Nobody seemed to realise that when Peter's ‘guardian' came in, it was actually Tony Stark with a baseball cap and sunglasses. Abnormally calm, he picked the kid up and left as soon as he arrived, cancelling the ambulance and ignoring the dumbfounded looks along the way.
They arrived at the Tower ten minutes later, Happy breaking multiple laws on the way, and had Peter being checked over by Bruce and Cho as soon as they left the car.
“How many times will he end up in the Med Bay this month?” Cho said under her breath and had to do a double take at looking at his temperature.
“How’s that even possible?” Bruce questioned and Tony shrugged in response.
“He’s all spider-y, you tell me.” Bruce clicked his fingers with an ideas soon after and turned to Helen.
“Spiders can’t thermoregulate so that means-" Cho finished him off.
“Peter’s gone into hibernation!” Tony was equally concerned and intrigued that a human could even do that.
“So how do we wake him up?” he questioned. Banner and Cho looked at each other before answering at the same time.
“We need to manually regulate his temperature,” Cho continued as more ideas came.
“We need to heat him up again and not allow him to be in temperatures below 100° F.”
“So what? We put him in a sauna for the the whole of winter? He’ll hate that, he can barely watch a movie without pacing the room,” Tony explained and once again Bruce looked like a lightbulb went off on top of his head.
“I know someone.”
“You want him to what now?” Reed asked over the phone.
The last thing he expected today was a phone call from Bruce Banner asking for help. They had known themselves due to working together on a discovery, one of the best of the century. It wasn’t even half an hour later that the Fantastic Four were on their way to Avengers Tower.
It was different circumstances than what Reed and the others expected, it wasn’t worked ending but Bruce had mentioned Spider-Man and Johnny was instantly on-board. It was no longer a secret to the Four that he was a fan boy.
Tony welcomed the four of the them and Bruce explained his idea, Johnny nodding eagerly the whole way through.
“You’re gonna have to see Spidey without his mask so just... don’t have a go at me, tell anyone or make fun of him. Not that you will because y'know,” Tony gestured to Johnny and they nodded with understanding. They followed him through the next room where Peter was lying comatose on the couch.
“Alright, light it up or whatever your catch phrase is, Fire Boy,” Tony said absentmindedly.
“Flame on!” he shouted, ignoring the looks he received. As the room heated up, Johnny began losing the flame and was eventually just admitting heat instead of fire. The seven of them observed Peter and it only took seven minutes before he gasped awake.
“Shit!” he yelped and flew of the couch into the ceiling. He hung upside down and looked at his audience.
“Um... hi?” he greeted while flipping back upright. “What happened?”
“You were hibernating and Flames-for-Brains woke you up,” Tony explained briefly while discreetly checking him for injury.
“Hibernation?”
“You’re more spider than you thought, kid.”