Work Text:
Winter comes early to New York City this year. By early October, frost is covering the sidewalks, people’s faces have been swallowed by hats and scarves, and on his walk to school yesterday, Peter had to help remove a kid’s tongue from a frosted lamp post. Ned had thoroughly enjoyed the story, but to Peter it was mostly a reminder of the chaos that will inevitably come with the early winter and the chaos that might litter his patrols.
Summer was dominated by crime – petty thieves are always more likely to linger in warm alley ways than cold ones – but people get stupid in winter. Snow excites people, and every winter so far, Peter has noticed an uptick in helping people after accidents specifically. He doesn’t mind, of course, Spider-Man is there to help everybody, whether their predicament is of their own doing or not, crime-related or not. Still, Peter recognises that an early winter bodes poorly for his sleep the next few weeks.
Still, Peter does his best to enjoy it. He, Ned, and MJ go skating in Central Park after school one day, and because it’s early in the season, it isn’t clogged with tourists yet so they have room to breathe on the ice. Ned falls over no less than eighteen times, and MJ spends more time sketching people leaning up against the barrier – Peter is 90% sure that most of them are Ned face down on the ice – but they still have a great time.
When it snows for the first time, the playground quickly turns into a lawless snowball fight, and most of the Decathlon team hang back after practice to build the biggest snowman they can manage. May makes him hot chocolate when he gets in the door, and they watch the first Christmas movie of the season, not giving a damn that it’s only October, because if the vibe is right then that’s enough.
Patrol incidents aren’t even that bad in the first few weeks, and Peter begins to wonder if Spider-Man has just made him a pessimist. He relaxes into the winter season, embracing all the home comforts that come with cold weather, even trying to enjoy the shivering, frigid air of the city as a nice change from the sweltering heat that melted away so quickly this year.
That is, until the first day of November brings with it a blizzard that threatens to bring the entire city to a standstill. Peter’s heard of sleepy towns in England and the South being overwhelmed by snow, but this is New York City. They deal with it every year, and every year the city barely stumbles. This blizzard, though, comes on so forcefully and so suddenly, that even New York buckles under its weight.
Peter watches six separate car accidents happen on his walk home from school – all minor, thankfully, but he almost rolled his eyes when the last car skidded into the fire hydrant and he had to jog once more into the road to make sure no-one was hurt. ‘Watches’ is probably a misnomer, anyway, because he can barely see six feet in front of him, and he heard every single accident before he saw a thing.
The snow is coming down thick and fast, and with almost no warning in the forecast. The mayor is advising people to shelter-in-place, but as soon as he steps foot in the safety of his apartment, he rushes to his bedroom to shed his snow-soaked clothes and hurriedly step into the Spider Suit. May isn’t home, and it doesn’t look like she will be anytime soon, so he scribbles her a note just in case before sneaking out of his window.
Tony’s secluded in his lab when the blizzard hits, and he’s blissfully ignorant for 25 whole minutes before Steve burts rudely through the door, dressed in his stupid fucking spandex for some reason.
“For what reason are you dressed in your stupid fucking spandex?” is the first question he asks, naturally.
“What– Tony, did you not hear the call to action?”
Tony rolls his eyes and puts down his spanner. Clearly there will be no more tinkering to be done tonight. “What call to action?”
“A blizzard has hit New York City, boss,” FRIDAY chimed in. “It’s causing chaos, and the mayor has asked the Avengers to pitch into the rescue efforts and help restore order to the city. I didn’t alert you because it did not fall into a categorical Avengers Level Threat, and you had me on STFU and Let Me Work mode.”
“Yeah, alright, fair enough.”
He wipes his hands off on a rag and stands up from his desk, coming face to face with Steve, whose eyebrow is pointedly raised.
“What?” he asks defensively. “How was I supposed to know?”
For a moment, Tony’s certain Steve will try to argue with him, but he soon thinks better of it, sighing as he rolls his eyes, turning around to lead them out of the lab.
As soon as they have their boots on the ground – so to speak, of course, Tony’s boots are very much not on the ground – he gets FRIDAY to patch him through to Karen, knowing with almost complete certainty that Peter will be out as well.
“Hi, dad!” Peter shouts over the chaos of whatever scene he’s just arrived at. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine with me,” Tony chuckles, amused as always at Peter’s insistence on caring about other people even when he is obviously the one in need of care or support. “Doesn’t sound so fine on your end.”
“Oh, there was just a car accident and the two guys involved are trying to kill each other,” Peter says nonchalantly. “Don’t worry, though, I’m keeping them apart.”
Tony’s silent for a moment. “You’re literally holding them apart, aren’t you?”
“Yep!” Peter replies cheerily. “They’re only human, though, so it’s not like it’s hard. The cops will be here soon, apparently.”
Tony shakes his head fondly. This kid will forever be something else completely. “Alright, well you stay safe, Pete, and call me if something happens. We’re all spread across the city, so at least one of us can be there in no time, alright?”
“Sure thing, dad! Catch ya later. Oh, the cops are here! Okay, bye, I gotta go–”
The line goes dead before they can hang up properly, but Tony doesn’t mind. He’ll catch up with his kid properly later, and within seconds, he spots an elderly man fallen over, swooping down to help him up. He can’t stop thinking about how much like Spider-Man he feels right now, looking out for the little guy, or how much he’s enjoying it.
It’s not long after he leaves the scene of the road rage incident that Peter watches in shocked horror as the boy falls through the cracked ice. No matter how inevitable it had felt as the cracks began to form, slinking their way through the surface layer, deepening gradually as they approached his position in the middle of the frozen lake, it still sends his heart swooping in his chest. He’s too far away to intervene before the boy falls under, watching perched from his position on a rooftop nearby, but he swings into action as soon as he sees it begin to happen, arriving seconds after the boy disappears into the water.
He ignores the cheers as he arrives, blocking out the cameras surrounding him to focus on rescuing the boy. Infinitely grateful for the lightness his spider genes have afforded him, he lowers himself gently onto the cracked ice, tethering himself to a nearby tree. Safety first, as Steve always likes to say.
“Can you reach up and grab my hand?” Peter calls to the boy, reaching his hand into the water to grasp for him. He’s underwater, fighting to get back to the surface, and Peter knows he probably can’t hear him, so he reaches down and feels through the dark, icy water for the boy's hand. He finds it quickly, wasting no time in hauling him up.
As he pulls the boy back onto the solid ice, he hears another ominous crack, and before he knows what’s happening, the ice beneath both of them is falling away. In one last act of strength, he pushes the boy away across the solid ice away from the forming crack as hard as he can, sending him flying as Peter is pulled beneath the water with such force that his web is pulled from the tree, leaving him to free fall into the icy water with nothing tying him to land.
It’s pure coincidence that Tony’s there. A small inkling of worry that, to this day he can’t explain, has him asking FRIDAY to plot a route to Peter’s location. He watches from a distance through the darkening evening and the flurry of snowflakes as Peter falls through the ice, his heart stopping as he lets out an involuntary scream of distress, putting full power into his thrusters. Peter’s submerged for less than ten seconds, but by the time he surfaces, Tony’s hovering above the hole in the ice, reaching down desperately to try and grab him.
“Take my hand, Pete,” he shouts, his heart in his throat as the sight of Peter submerged in ice cold water fills him with dread and fear like nothing else.
Peter complies as soon as he’s able, his reaction time slower than it usually is, as he’s weighed down by the freezing temperature and heavy, icy water. Tony wastes no time hauling him up into his chest.
“Hold on, kid,” he says as calmly as he can manage, despite his racing pulse and gripping fear. Peter obeys, using his sticking power to adhese himself to Tony’s suit, and soon enough they’re soaring across Manhattan towards the Tower. He sees out of the corner of his eye as the boy Peter rescued is attended to by on-scene paramedics, and feels a flash of guilt that he didn’t even think about him as his son’s health was the only thing to occupy any space in his brain. The force of Peter’s shivers as he hangs on to his cold metal suit, however, is enough for him to focus solely on thrusting as quickly as he can through the freezing Manhattan sky.
As he flies through the open window into the Medbay, he’s infinitely glad they’re on home turf this time, and not in some backwater part of the country, trying to treat a hypothermic spider with field medicine and Bruce’s rudimentary medical knowledge.
Helen’s in town, and thanks to FRIDAY’s genius coding, she’s already waiting for them by a gurney. Tony lowers him down, Peter releasing his sticking powers far slower than he usually does. As soon as he’s free, though, Tony wastes no time stepping outside of his suit to be by Peter’s side properly, and the way Peter looks up at him drowsily through blue, chattering lips just about breaks him in two.
“Helen,” he pleads desperately, his fingers finding the wet, tangled strands of Peter’s hair.
She looks up at him in her usual cool and collected manner, sympathy swimming in her eyes. “I know, Tony,” she says. “He’s going to be okay, I promise. FRIDAY said he was only submerged for a matter of seconds, and we have a fully kitted out Medbay here to get him all warmed up again.”
He watches with baited breath as she takes Peter’s vital signs, her face not revealing concern or relief, leaving him tied up in knots.
“Come on, bambino. Stay with us.” He places his warm hand on Peter’s freezing forehead, choosing to focus on what he can do instead of what he can’t. “Keep those bambi eyes open.”
“‘M not bambi,” Peter slurs in protest, his eyes slowly finding Tony’s.
Tony can’t help the fond smile that spreads across his face, the edge of relief finding the corners of his aching fear. If Peter can still protest him and his typical sappy, dad-like ways, then he has to be okay. Right?
“He has a temperature of 94 F,” Helen cuts in, scrubbing away the iota of relief that had begun to thaw his nerves, “which meets the criteria for hypothermia. His lack of thermoregulation is doing him no favours here, so we need to warm him up, pronto.”
Shit. Ice sits in his chest as he watches the barest sign of concern worm its way into Helen’s expression.
“How dangerous is this, Helen?” he asks, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “I mean specifically this case?”
Her lips thin, as she turns around to help a nurse prep an IV line. “His pulse is weak and his breathing is shallow, and if we don’t warm him up in the next hour I’ll be concerned. But as for now, I have complete confidence that he’ll be right as rain by tomorrow if we can get his temperature up.”
Tony does his best to let her words reassure him, but looking down at Peter’s pale face, blue lips, and chattering teeth, his love for his son overpowers any sense of relief or comfort Helen’s words might offer him if it was anyone else but Peter in this bed.
“I’m going to start by giving him a warm salt IV infusion,” Helen explains calmly as she inserts the cannula into the back of his hand. “Then we’re going to rewarm his airways with humidified oxygen. One of the nurses has gone to fetch the heated blanket and all the rest of the blankets we have in the Medbay to passively assist in the rewarming efforts, too. We’ll monitor him over the next hour, and if this doesn’t work, then we’ll get him on the hemodialysis machine to start rewarming his blood.”
Tony sinks down into the chair next to Peter, grabbing his hand with both of his and pulling it towards him, pressing a firm kiss to the back of his hand.
Peter moves his head slightly to look at him drowsily. “You look sad,” he slurs, moving his hand from the hold Tony has it in to poke at his frowning mouth, and Tony can’t help but lend a smile to the display of ridiculous cuteness his son manages to bring to every situation, no matter how difficult.
“Baby,” Tony says, his voice wet with unshed tears, “I’m with you, aren’t I? How could I ever be sad when I’m next to you?”
Peter gives him a wonky smile. “‘M tired.”
Tony can’t help the urgency creeping into his voice. “I know, bambino, but I need you to keep your eyes open for me, okay?”
“Sorr’, dad,” Peter mumbles, “too tired.”
“No, Peter,” he calls, standing up as panic seizes him once more, “Peter, baby, wake up!”
Peter doesn’t wake up. Helen explains that the effect of warming his cold body probably made him even sleepier than he was before, the call of sleep too powerful to ignore, but nothing will calm Tony’s pounding heart as his eyes lock on Peter’s unconscious, peaceful face.
Over the next hour, they monitor Peter’s temperature meticulously, tiny fragments of Tony’s frozen panic thaws with each decimal increase in the display next to his bed. By the time they hit the one hour mark, Peter’s temperature has reached 97.5, and Helen declares him out of the woods.
“He’ll continue to warm up over the course of the night, and he should reach normal body temperature in no time,” she reassures Tony, smiling down at him as his unshed tears finally fall from his eyes in sheer relief.
“God, I love this kid,” he says, wiping away his tears, “but he’s definitely going to kill me one of these days.”
Helen’s expression is the fondest he’s ever seen it, and they’ve all watched as a drugged up Steve rambled about how cute Bucky looks in the morning. “Probably,” she concedes, “but don’t pretend you won’t enjoy every minute of it.”
He grins, looking down at Peter’s peaceful face with far more peace in his own heart than he could earlier. Something about knowing his son is safe, warm, and alive calms him down like nothing else, and right now it’s exactly what he needs.
“Yeah,” he sighs, as he brushes a gentle hand across Peter’s slowly warming forehead, “I can’t argue with that.”