Chapter Text
Peter fell out of his bed, literally. He let out a groan and held out his arm towards his nightstand, aiming at his phone which was incessantly vibrating and ringing, then he realised that he didn’t have his web shooter on his hand. He groaned louder into his rug, before letting out a loud sigh and pushing him up to his feet. He turned his alarm off, before dropping to sit on his bed with another sigh.
His entire body ached, his head was pounding so hard that he could swear that he could feel the blood moving in his vessels. His throat burned, he grabbed a bottle from his bedside table and took a swig of water, it burnt as it hit his throat, he winced as he forced himself to swallow it.
He hadn’t felt this rough in a long time, not even after everything with Liz’s dad, this was a more consuming feeling of unwell-ness, even though he was fairly certain that wasn’t an actual word. He could feel how slow his brain was working today, ideally he would just climb back into bed, but his phone buzzed again, he looked at the screen this time- ‘
WAKE UP FOR SCHOOL’
.
“Fuck,” he mumbled under his breath, he couldn’t even claim he didn’t know the day, or he could but his lie wouldn’t be very convincing. And May would make sure he went to school anyway, if he didn’t let on how he felt.
“You got this Peter.” He forced himself to stand up, and to get dressed for school. He swept his textbooks and homework into his bag, throwing an errant pen into his bag, and hoping it wouldn’t explode.
He rubbed his eyes with his sleeve as he slipped out of his room and nearly fell over the chair at the kitchen table.
“Whoa there, you sleepwalking there, honey?”
Peter let out a yawn, “I wish. I’ve got a Spanish vocab test, and we’re gonna be given our essay topics for English, and, er, oh, a decathlon meeting during free period.”
May placed a bowl of brightly coloured cereal in front of Peter, ruffling his hair, but then she paused, she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Honey, you’re feeling pretty hot there… Are you feeling well?”
Peter shook his head free of her hand, “I’m fine, just didn’t sleep well last night.” He shovelled in some cereal but it felt like wet cardboard in his mouth, he forced himself to swallow it, wincing again.
May grabbed her slightly burned toast and sat down across from him at the kitchen table, she frowned at him, taking a bite of the toast, and swallowing it with a mouthful of black coffee. “You really don’t look well, Peter, and you were asleep before I was last night. Do I need to-?”
“-No, May.” He gave his aunt a knowing look, “You’re not going to cancel going to the wedding of your friend to watch me not being unwell. You’ve not seen them since Ben’s funeral and they’re your best friends, you said you were going to their wedding, you promised them. Anyway, it’s all good ‘cause I’m not sick anyway, I swear, I’m just tired.”
May let out a small sigh, then gave him a tense smile, “I just worry about you honey, especially as you were meant to be staying overnight with Ned but-” she held up her hands in surrender when he rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, you’ve stayed overnight before by yourself loads of times, and you’re a superhero and all that. It doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you, especially when you’re here looking like you were hit by a bus.”
Peter rolled his eyes again, “I can’t even get sick, so I’m not, but if I were sick I would only patrol a little and rest a lot, but again, I’m not sick, so it’s all good. He downed some orange juice, letting out a breath of relief and wincing at the way it both soothed and relieved his throat. “Anyway, it’s Thursday, so tomorrow I’ll go to Tony’s for a few hours after school, so you don’t need to worry…. I mean, unless he’s cancelled? Which is fine, it’s-”
“- Honey , Tony hasn’t cancelled on you at all, I promise you that he loves to hang out with you and have your ‘boy time’,” she beamed when Peter pulled a face at her air quotes, one of the joys of having a teenager was getting to embarrass him.
Plus the fact that he was trying to hide how much he wanted to hang out with Tony was sweet. At least now, a few weeks after the first ‘lab night’ as Peter called it, he was starting to take it as being a regular weekly thing, and instead of getting May to talk to Tony to make sure it was all set up Peter was responding to and actually sending Tony texts. She knew that it wasn’t like they were every father and son now, but they were closer, and both seemed to be pretty happy with it.
“I gotta go.”
May held her hands out in surprise, “Peter, you’ve barely eaten any of your breakfast.”
Peter shoved one more mouthful of cereal into his mouth, “Great cereal, May,” he forced himself to swallow with another winced, though he tried to tell himself that it didn’t hurt as much as when he first woke up. “I really gotta go though, I’m gonna be late.”
“Fine, go, but remember to eat lunch,” she got to her feet and pulled him into a hug, kissing the side of his head, “I’ll see you on Sunday if you need me at all, call me, I’ll be straight home.” She felt him squeeze her a little tighter.
“I will, but I won’t,” he told her quietly, before eventually pulling away, “have a great time May, say hi to your friends from me. And relax, I’m all good, I swear!”
May listened as Peter closed the door, she shook her head, “He’s so stubborn,” she turned to look from the direction of the doorway to the fridge, where the wedding invite was stuck to it with a novelty magnet from Germany. She knew Peter wasn’t feeling well, he had a temperature, and looked as pale as a ghost, not to mention how horse his voice was… up until he told her that he was ‘all good’, then his voice went all high pitched, exactly as it did whenever he lied.
She hesitated, then grabbed her cellphone off of the kitchen table, flicking through her contacts ‘til she found the one she had been looking for and pressed call.
Tony had found that having a child had completely changed his life, he had heard that it would happen often enough that he didn’t know if he believed it, until he had his kid in his life - though it had changed in very different ways than if Peter was a newborn.
Even on the days he wasn’t hanging out with Peter he was now actually up in the morning, he was working on some new pieces of tech for Stark Industries, without becoming obsessed like he used to, just in case Peter were to need him at any time. He even went with Pepper to some important meetings, he’d spend most of the time texting Rhodey complaints about it, but it was still enough of an improvement for Pepper to approve.
He was already on his second coffee of the day when May’s name lit up his cellphone. He practically threw his coffee mug onto the counter in front of him and picked his cell up.
“May? What’s wrong? Has something happened to Peter? Is he okay?” He breathed a sigh of relief when she told him that Peter wasn’t seriously ill, but was coming down with something and stubbornly refusing to admit it, then asked him if Peter could stay with him until she was home on Sunday, to keep an eye on him.
He vigorously nodded before remembering she couldn’t see him. “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, I can do that, no problem. Look, anytime you need to I’m here, Peter can stay with me anytime, I mean that, my home is his home. Is there… are there things he’s gonna need?”
Tony picked his mug of coffee up again, downing the entire thing with a wince as coffee burnt his throat ever so slightly, he placed the mug in the dishwasher, “I know it’s not like having a dog, stop laughing May! I’ll be there in fifteen, depending on how many red lights there are. Hey d’you want to take my jet to where it is you’re going?”
He flicked his cell to speaker phone and headed to his elevator. He rolled his eyes at May refused the jet with a pointed comment about the environment, “Fine, enjoy being pressed against a stranger for a couple of hours,” he pulled up May’s flight information easily, he’d upgrade her and her friends travel to first class as soon as he was out of her apartment with Peter’s stuff, otherwise she might be nice to him and he didn’t want to have to do that.
“Psst.”
Peter squeezed his eyes shut as the world tilted around him. He counted to three before opening them, the world looked a bit more right now, but it was still too bright and too loud in the cafeteria.
“Dude, are you sick? I thought you didn’t get sick, but you look really-”
“-I’m fine.” Peter insisted, “and I don’t get sick. I’m just… it’s loud here, that’s all.” He took a bite out of the square slice of extremely mid pizza, the cheese stuck to the roof of his mouth, the pepperoni was wet with oil. He forced himself to swallow it.
“Whatever you say, man.” Ned took a bite of his own pizza slice with ease. “I’m really sorry you can’t stay at mine this weekend, my tiya’s suddenly coming to town, my mom forgot about it. Is-”
“-It’s all good, Ned,” Peter managed to send him a smile, “I’m looking forward to it, I can game all saturday if I want, and May will leave me money for takeout, it’s gonna be chill.” he bumped his shoulder against Ned’s with affection.
“Maybe we can play Overwatch, y’know when my mom’s not on my back about having guests over.”
“That sounds good,” he glanced around at their table, just MJ reading a book about theoretical physics, he lowered his voice anyway, “I’m just gonna patrol a little tonight, then I’ll be online if you wanna play.”
Ned held his hand out in a fist to Peter, and Peter obliged in doing their handshake with an easy smile. He pushed his plate of pizza away, and cradled his bottle of water. MJ sent him a curious look, he looked away, he didn’t want her calling him out on his bullshit on the off chance he got sent home and May had to cancel her trip.