Chapter Text
Peter trudged through the streets, biting back a groan whenever the bustling passerby would bump into him. He felt hot, unnaturally so, and the sweat plastering his hair to the nape of his neck did nothing to cool him down. He wondered dimly when it had gotten so warm. The snow at his feet clung to his shoes, reminding him of the chill he was meant to be feeling, but he only felt uncomfortable in his jacket.
He shrugged it off, allowing the cold air to encompass his heated body. He stuffed the jacket into his backpack as he walked, and caught sight of the Spider-Man suit nestled at the bottom of the bag. Any excitement he might have had at the prospect of patrolling was replaced by dread. He was too tired to patrol, but saving lives was a job he took seriously, and so he ducked into an alley and donned his suit.
Karen switched on the heater in his suit the moment he put it on, and Peter barely restrained his complaints. Karen was programmed to keep the heater on in temperatures below 55℉, and had been ever since Tony found out that Peter couldn’t thermoregulate. If he switched it off, Karen would notify Tony, who would then badger him until he confessed that he wasn’t feeling well.
It was a protocol that Peter had thought was sweet when it was first installed. It made him feel like Tony cared about him beyond making sure he didn’t die in battle. Now, it was a thorn in his side.
Peter could only endure the additional warmth for two hours. In that time, he stopped a robbery, helped a man find his dropped hearing aid, and returned a lost dog to its crying owner.
By the time he arrived home and pulled off the suit, his body was slick all over with sweat, and his cheeks were flushed with a deeper red than he’d ever seen. He staggered over to his shower, pushing aside the curtain and falling in. He groped around the shower blindly until his hands caught the knob, which he twisted desperately until cold water started running down his face. He grasped the wall and stumbled to his feet, swaying in place as he let the water rinse off his sweat.
His head felt faint, and as his eyes roved over the stall in search of his shampoo, his vision started filling with black spots. Peter reached for his shampoo bottle once he found it, but lost his balance and fell towards it. His head smacked into the wall, and he was out like a light.
-
A hand combed through his hair, gently tugging and undoing the knots in it. Peter leaned into the comforting touch, an entirely different warmth to the one he’d been suffering from earlier filling his chest. The hand paused its ministrations, but didn’t pull away.
“Are you waking up?” a hushed voice murmured by his ear.
Peter struggled to open his eyes. His eyelids felt heavy, refusing to do anything other than twitch, and so he stared into darkness as the hand in his hair resumed its motion. He relaxed into the bed, giving up for the moment. He let himself drift in the darkness, the hand on his head his only tether to reality.
“It’s alright,” the same voice sighed fondly. “You do like your beauty sleep. Don’t worry, Pete. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”
Peter let himself slip away further at the assurance. He felt safe in the presence of that voice, warm and loving as it was.
The darkness wasn’t all that frightening now.
-
The steady beeping of the machine at Peter’s side roused him from his sleep. He shuffled in place a little as he craned his neck to the left, where he was met with a heart monitor that sounded in time with his heart. He swallowed thickly, wondering how he’d landed himself in the Med-Bay again.
“How are you feeling?”
Peter jumped in surprise, his head swivelling to the other side, where Tony was perched on a chair and watching him earnestly.
“I’m okay,” Peter took a moment to survey himself. “I have a small headache, but other than that, I’m fine.”
“Good,” Tony said, before his expression hardened. “Now, what were you thinking when you decided to patrol with a fever of 104 degrees?”
Peter groaned. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“You fell and hit your head in the shower,” Tony stressed. “What if you’d fallen while swinging? I doubt you’d have gotten away with only a headache if you fell thirty stories.”
Peter’s lips turned downward when he noticed the fear hidden behind the anger in Tony’s expression. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
Tony didn’t deny his fear, though he didn’t acknowledge it, either. “I’ll be adding more protocols to your suit. This isn’t happening again.”
Peter didn’t argue.
Tony’s shoulders lost some of their tension. “Are you hungry? I had someone restock the Jell-O.”
“Do you have red?” Peter’s face lit up.
Tony reached into the pockets of his slacks and brought out two cups of red Jell-O. He handed both to Peter, before setting a plastic spoon on top of them. Peter thanked him before peeling off the wrapper on one of the cups, and dunking his spoon into it. He scooped out a spoonful of the strawberry jelly and stuffed it into his mouth, paying no mind to the thin trail of it that trickled down his chin.
Tony swiped his thumb along Peter’s chin, clearing it of the jelly before sucking it into his own mouth. Peter dropped his spoon into his cup, watching with wide eyes until Tony pulled his thumb out of his mouth and cleaned it with a napkin.
“I’ll get someone to check you out and see if you can be discharged,” Tony patted his thigh as he stood. “Stay put, sweetheart.”
Peter’s jelly laid forgotten once Tony left. He had called him sweetheart. Just yesterday, Peter was trying to get him to drop the ‘kid’ moniker, and now he’d been upgraded to ‘sweetheart’? What had changed in the span of twenty-four hours?
When Tony came back, he was followed into the room by Dr. Althea Roberts, whom Peter was more than familiar with. Dr. Roberts treated him every time he ended up in the Med-Bay, and with how often he got injured, he got to know her well. Their friendship and Dr. Roberts’ talent in the medical field made her his favorite doctor.
“Mr. Parker,” she shook her head sternly. “What you pulled yesterday could’ve gotten you killed.”
“Yesterday?” Peter’s brows knitted together.
“You woke up a few times, but for the most part, you slept for a day,” Tony explained, taking a few steps back towards the door. “I’ll give you your privacy.”
Tony was leaving the room before Peter could tell him that he didn’t mind him hearing his conversation with Dr. Roberts. Still, he appreciated the space. Tony’s worry tended to morph into nosiness, the need to know everything wrong with his friends and rectify it driving him to budge his way into places he didn’t need to be in. Peter was glad to see him working on that — it was a byproduct of his anxiety, and one that Tony himself didn’t like.
Dr. Roberts started speaking as soon as the door swung closed. “You had a high fever. When you went to shower, you hit your head and got a concussion. If your head hurts, or you’re feeling confused, that’s normal and it will stop soon. You might experience some memory loss, but it shouldn’t be anything extreme. Any memories you might have lost will come back.”
“Okay,” Peter nodded to show he understood. “How did you find me in the shower? I was alone.”
“According to Mr. Stark, a friend of yours stopped by and found you in the shower. He called Mr. Stark, who brought you here to be treated.”
Dr. Roberts asked him some preliminary questions before giving him approval for a discharge. Once she finished speaking with him, she had a nurse come in and unhook him from all of the machines surrounding his bed. The nurse brought him the spare clothes he kept in the Med-Bay for when he’d inevitably need them, and he swapped his hospital gown for them. When he finished getting dressed, he exited the room he’d been staying in, and found Tony standing in the hallway with his phone in hand.
Tony slipped his phone into his pocket. “We can go now?”
“Yes,” Peter wrung his hands shyly. “Thank you for staying with me. You didn’t have to.”
A grim look settled over Tony’s face. “I needed to make sure you were okay.”
“I am okay, if that helps,” Peter offered.
Tony wrapped an arm over his shoulders, tugging him into his side as he led him to the reception counter he’d be discharged at. Peter tried not to sink into the touch, wanting to avoid giving away how much it pleased him to be so close to Tony, but he couldn’t help curling just a little bit closer.
“It does.”