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Peter stumbled out of his bedroom in the Tower mid-cough, bending over to cough properly before he pulled out his bowl and filled it with cereal. He stuffed it into his mouth miserably, closing his eyes to shut out the bright light that was ruining his life. (It was the sun, and he hated it).
He was exhausted, and feverish on top of that. Peter spooned more cereal into his mouth blindly, his senses registering the new arrival to the room and getting ready for an argument he was determined to win.
“Holy shit,” Tony rushed up to him, immediately putting a hand to his forehead and then retracting it with an audible wince. “You have the highest temperature I’ve ever felt on a living creature, you are not going to school today.”
Peter had been expecting that. Aunt May would have done the same, condemned him from school, if it was a serious illness. As he was, though, with a slight temperature and cough, May would have told him to take some painkillers and suck it up. Not in a mean way, just a parent way. But Tony was like a helicopter parent kind of mentor—he was new to the role, he didn’t know that it was common practise to send your kid into school when they were ill.
He was at the Tower because he'd been there to work in the labs with Tony. It had been slightly derailed by the fact that Peter had managed to pass out three separate times whilst working, purely from exhaustion. Tony had gotten all worried, so they’d stopped working and Peter had went to sleep in his room in the Tower, rolling his eyes.
As if Tony would have done anything even remotely similar to that if he’d been the one to pass out.
“Mr Stark, I have to go to school,” Peter protested. “I’ve got stuff to do.”
He’d gone to school feeling much worse than he was feeling at that precise moment before. He could handle it. He could.
“Stuff?” Tony inquired, raising an eyebrow.
Peter nodded. “I have to lead Academic Decathlon, MJ’s sick, and then in APUSH I have this test to hand in, it’s on my desk, I’ve done it, just gotta hand it in. And then patrolling, and Robotics club, and all of my other subjects, and it’s my turn to do the groceries tomorrow, May and I trade it off every time, so, my turn.”
“Right,” Tony said slowly. “Yeah, no, you can’t go.”
Peter put down his spoon in frustration. “I just told you—”
“Nope, adult’s talking,” Tony interrupted, pushing away from the kitchen island made a hand gesture for him to follow. “Get up, walk with me.”
Peter did so, his cereal finished. Tony was walking slowly, although from the stress of his gait, he was making an active effort to go slower so Peter could keep up. Peter was fine—having problems walking at normal speed didn’t mean anything. He was totally fine.
They walked back into the corridor where the rooms were and Peter got the feeling he knew where this was going.
He was right.
“That’s my bed,” Peter said, as Tony pushed open the door to his room at the Tower and pointed to his bed.
“I’m aware,” Tony crossed his arms. “Get in it. And stay there.”
“You can’t force me to stay here,” Peter replied, cross as he walked into the room and collapsed back onto his bed, secretly relieved that Tony was giving him an out. “May would send me to school.”
“Uh, nice try, but actually kid, this was a mutual decision, I called her.”
That stumped him. “Oh. But really, Mr Stark, I’d be totally fine if you just let me—”
Tony shook his head. “Yeah, sorry, but you passed out three times in our lab session yesterday, you’re not going anywhere, Underoos. Trust me, if you get out of this bed, you’ll just pass out again.”
“No I won’t,” Peter protested, and Tony raised an eyebrow.
Peter was determined to prove Tony wrong—he’d made it all the way to breakfast, hadn’t he, so he was fine—so he flipped off the bed and stood up again in triumph. He lasted all of three seconds—
—then he passed out again.
-
Damn it, he hated when Tony was right, Peter grumbled as he awoke. He could tell it was several hours later, because he felt a lot more well-rested and the light in his room was all wrong for if it was still eight in the morning. He rubbed a hand over his face, sat up, and saw Tony leaning on the door frame, arms crossed.
“I sorted it,” Tony told him nonchalantly, looking pleased with himself and trying to hide it. He stepped into the room.
Peter just stared at him in confusion. Here was Tony Stark, stood in front of him, with a sheepish smile on his face, telling him he’d sorted something. Sorted what, exactly? He hadn’t been very clear.
“What?” Peter asked, and it kind of reverberated through his own ears, so he winced. Yup, still had a cold. Tony hadn’t sorted that.
Tony made a vague hand gesture. “I did all of the stuff you needed to do.”
“You…huh?” Peter frowned, and then stared outside. “Wait, what time is it? Did I miss school completely? Shoot—I need to email Ms Mitchell, I never handed in that test.”
He winced—missing a school day was going to have all sorts of repercussions. Mitchell had a tendency to not be very lenient on late tests.
“Uh, no, kid, you did actually.” Tony corrected, handing it to him. “And I got her to mark it on the spot, fast turn around. Apparently that sort of thing works when you’ve got my face. You got an A, but you can see all of that. I had no idea you knew so much about the Civil War, or history in general to be honest. Thought you were more of a maths kid, but you’re just a complete nerd, aren't you?”
Peter just gaped at him, staring at first his test and then back at Tony, incredulous. Tony had gone to his school, had handed in his test for him, had spoken to his teacher? It was hard to fathom, but there was irrefutable proof there in front of him, the red ‘A’ on his paper.
“Positive connotations, of course,” Tony added, and then continued. “So, yeah, Mitchell was lovely and understanding about the whole situation.”
Peter put that aside, a sudden cold realisation washing over him. He’d missed the school day, which meant that— “Oh my god, I missed AcaDec, MJ’s going to kill me, I told her I could do it.”
Tony held up a finger, wincing. “Yeah, about that one too. You were supposed to lead a session on science. Bit broad, I thought. We went through about half the syllabus.”
Peter spluttered. “You—”
“I led it for you.” Tony explained. “Flash—sorry, Eugene’s—face when I turned up instead of you was priceless. Wow. I wish I could replay it. It was a picture.”
Peter didn’t have words, so he just continued to gape. Tony wasn’t done.
“And Robotics club, well I didn't want to interfere too much there. You have your own projects going on, so I just essentially gave them a lecture on the cutting edge of robotics. Gotta be done.” Tony turned to look at him, a glint in his eyes. “Hey, what do you think about me becoming a college lecturer? Actually scratch that, I’ll ask your buddy Ned, he had the experience of listening in to both of my talks, gives me more insight.”
“You went to school for me?” Peter was still stuck on the incredulous nature of that, not the fact that apparently the billionaire wanted to do college lectures. “The whole day?”
He hadn’t just gone to hand in Peter’s test—he’d stayed. He’d done a lecture for the AcaDec team. For the robotics club. Tony Stark had done that. For him.
Tony nodded, not seeming phased by the fact that it was a monumental thing for him to have done. “Yup, got all of your homework from your various profs and then I swung by the grocery store, so don’t worry about that one.”
Oh, that had Peter worried. Tony was a billionaire—his idea of grocery shopping was lightyears beyond the Parkers. Peter had seen the fridge in the penthouse kitchen, it was full of condiments you could only buy from Europe and gourmet half-made meals.
“You bought the food—” He started, but was interrupted.
“Mr Delmar helped. He knew the kind of things you guys normally go for, as May didn’t provide a list,” Tony shrugged.
Huh. He’d gone to Mr Delmars for the food. He’d expected Tony to go to some flashy store and spend hundreds of dollars, but clearly he knew better than to do that. Damn.
“And I bought you Tylenol, because you guys didn’t have any,” Tony chucked it at him, and Peter caught it deftly. “Take some now, cause we don’t have any here either.”
Peter did so, reaching for his bottle, processing what Tony had done for him as he swallowed the pill. Then he collected himself.
“Thank you,” Peter told him sincerely. “I really—I really appreciate it. Everything you’ve done for me, but especially today. Thanks, Mr Stark.”
Tony smiled softly. “Honestly, wasn't that big of—”
“No, it is,” Peter stopped him. It showed how much Tony cared about him, and he wasn’t going to let Tony just sweep it under the rug as though it was nothing. “I owe you a lot.”
“Oh, you do, huh?” Tony raised an eyebrow.
“A lot,” Peter stressed. “I’ll pay it back to you at some point, I just need to think of a way how.”
Tony repeated his action, staring at him with an odd expression—slightly reserved. “How’s about you stop calling me Mr Stark?”
Peter sighed. They’d had this debate before—Peter had always rejected the idea of calling his mentor Tony. “It would be so weird to call you by your first name, Mr Stark, I don’t know why but the word coming out of my mouth…let’s try it, okay, uh…hi Ton—no, ugh, look, it just feels wrong, I don’t—”
His rambling was interrupted by Tony, who swallowed.
“I wasn’t thinking Tony,” Tony glanced away. “I was more aiming for….Dad.”
There was a poignant pause, where Peter’s mouth dropped open in shock and he was pretty sure his heart skipped several beats whilst rocketing up its BPM to about three thousand. His brain was just a nonstop stream of dad dad dad dad dad.
Tony wanted him to call him dad.
“I mean…unless that’s overstepping,” Tony was retreating, taking a step back, his gaze dashing to look at Peter’s reaction for a split second before returning to the floor. “Don’t feel like you have to—god, I’ve fucked this up, I’ll just—”
Tony made an effort to leave, pushing back his hair with one palm, stressed.
“Don't go.”
The last thing he wanted was for Tony to leave, not now, so he pushed the duvet back and stumbled out of the bed again, wanting to hug him so bad.
Tony turned back around, his eyes widening in alarm as he realised what Peter was doing. “Peter, don’t get out of—”
But Peter was already rushing up to him and pulling Ton—his dad—into the biggest hug he could manage, probably infecting the man with his illness as he did so. Who cared about that, though? Tony hugged him back, probably quite taken aback at the sudden hug. Dad, dad, dad.
It had been so long since he’d had someone to call that. He grinned, and smiled up at Tony, ignoring the slight dizzy feeling he was experiencing to focus on him instead.
“Hey, Pete,” Tony whispered.
“Hey, dad,” Peter whispered back, and it was quiet, just for them, but it made Tony smile that soft smile that was reserved just for people he cared about, and Peter stepped back to give the man some space, and then the dizzy feeling got a lot worse a lot faster.
He passed out again. But it was okay. Because his dad was there to catch him. And he always would be.