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A day can go from normal to disastrous so quickly.
Tony knew that. As a super hero, he’d experienced days where he’d be sitting a boring business meeting one minute, and then having to suit up as some otherworldly being crashes their ship into midtown the next. He’d be snoozing on the couch on minute, and then been startled awake by Peter running into the house with a screaming Morgan in his arms after she’d taken a bad fall outside and needed stitches for a cut on her face.
(He'd also experienced riding in a military car before being attacked by terrorists and kidnapped, and having a day walking in central park with Pepper end in losing Peter and half the universe, but he genuinely prefers to not have those in the forefront of his mind.)
It just one of those normal days at first.
Peter and Morgan were out of school for the summer. Rhodey was in town for a visit. Happy and May had just celebrated six months together. What better way to celebrate all that, than having the whole family out to lunch?
Tony had never set foot inside a Friendly’s before, but Peter’s insistence (and Morgan’s excitement about the ice cream they had) couldn’t be ignored, and he soon found himself at a table in the back of the restaurant, as far away from ogling patrons as they could be.
“Morgan, sweetie, I want to see you take two bites of that cheeseburger before you eat another fry!” Pepper told her daughter, trying to wipe some ketchup from the six-year-old’s lip.
She pulled away from the napkin. “But mommy! Those are the yummy part!” While she was distracted, Peter reached over to her plate and stole one of her fries, causing Morgan to give her “brother” the dirtiest look. “Daddy! Petey stole my French fry!”
Tony clicked his tongue in a playful way. “Stealing fries from a baby, Parker? Have I taught you nothing about righteousness?”
Peter grinned at him. “I got my fill of righteousness lessons by having to watch Mr. Captain Rogers’ PSAs in detention.”
Tony’ face fell, and Rhodey laughed, almost choking on the piece of steak he was chewing in the process.
The waitress came by the table. “Are we finding everything okay?”
“My brother stole my French fry!” Morgan complained. “And then Daddy called me a baby, but I’m a big girl!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, sweetheart!” the waitress said to her gently. “But I wanted to ask about something better than French fries anyway…” She held up a stack of dessert menus. “…if it’s okay with Mommy and Daddy, of course!”
Morgan and Peter both cheered as Pepper accepted the menus from the waitress and began to hand them out.
“I think the one most upset if we skipped out on the ice cream would be Tones.” Rhodey quipped as he opened the menu.
“Oh, come on. That was one time, and I was high off my-”
“We are not talking about that in front of Morgan, Tony.” Pepper interjected.
Tony glanced over at his daughter, who was too engrossed in the ice cream options to even notice the conversation.
Suddenly, her face crinkled in confusion.
“There’s mint ice cream?” Morgan asked, completely bewildered.
Peter looked over at her. “You never had mint ice cream?”
“Nuh-uh! It sounds yucky!”
“You never know how something is until you try it!” May pointed out. “Peter used to love mint chocolate chip! I used to have to put a lock on the freezer door, because this little spider was a climber even before…” She quickly glanced around at the other patrons, lowering her voice before she concluded. “…well, before now!”
Peter’s ears were red at her words as the adults at the table chuckled. “…I haven’t had that in forever…” He looked at his sister. “And May’s right, Morgs. You might really like it!”
Morgan made a face as if she were thinking hard. “But I wanted Rocky Road…”
“Tell you what, I’ll get the mint chocolate chip, and you can have a taste! If you like it, I’ll trade you half of mine for half of yours!”
This idea made Morgan brighten with excitement, and once their waitress came back, she was the first one to chirp out her order.
~~~~
About ten minutes later, their ice cream orders appeared, and as expected, the little girl fell in love with the taste of min chocolate chip.
“Toldja!” Peter teased as he fulfilled his promise of scooping half of his ice cream and putting it in her dish, before taking the same amount from hers.
“Uh, oh. Tony, Pepper, you guys will have to lock the freezer!” Rhodey laughed, elbowing Tony as he dug into his Reese’s peanut butter Friend-Z.”
Tony laughed, shaking his head. “I’m sure these two would thwart any security measures I put in place. Peter was bad enough, but Morguna seems to take after her daddy a little too much in the big brain department!”
His kids both flashed mischievous grins at Tony before going back to their ice cream. The genius shook his head once more before doing the same.
The silence of eating was broken a minute later by Peter clearing his throat. He did so again. And again, before reaching for his glass of water.
“Yeah, dairy does that my throat, too.” Tony joked. “Welcome to getting old, kid.”
Peter laughed a little, but there was no mirth behind it. He was clearly distracted by something else. He took another sip of water, putting the glass down to scratch his neck.
“You okay, kid?” Happy asked.
Peter nodded rapidly. “Yeah! Uh, yeah, I’m fine, just… maybe something in the ice cream is stuck in my throat?” He began scratching his neck even more now. He began to pull at the collar of his shirt, revealing angry looking hives all over his neck.
“That doesn’t look ‘fine’ to me!” May said, jumping to her feet and rushing to her nephew’s side. Peter was trying to clear his throat again, his breathing becoming wheezy, and his face starting to swell.
“Auntie May, what’s wrong with Petey?” Morgan cried out, tears starting to fall.
“Anaphylaxis,” May identified, though her trembling hands betrayed the calm tone she was trying to maintain.
Tony immediately felt his body freeze up as he watched his kid struggle to breathe. Every brain cell in his mind was going haywire, telling him to get up and help the teen.
But his muscles wouldn’t obey. He was frozen, stuck in his chair; only able to watch the scene unfold as Peter’s face began to turn red.
“We need to get him to the Medbay, stat!” Rhodey said, only taking a second to glance Tony’s way, before he shook his head and pulled two metal bracelets from his pocket. Tony on vaguely registered that those were his War Machine nanotech housing units he’d gifted Rhodey on his last birthday. “Happy, call Cho!”
Happy was already putting his phone to his ear. “Way ahead of you. I thought he wasn’t allergic to anything?”
That’s what I thought, too…
Tony’s ears began to ring, a high-pitched whining drowning out most of the sounds around him, leaving him only able to hear muffled speech, and the sound of Morgan crying in fear.
Help Peter. Help Peter.
The kid was struggling more and more to breathe.
Help him!
His body refused to budge.
Suddenly, the terrible realization came to his min- even if I could help, what could I do?
A loud clattering that was loud enough to break through the ringing sound caught his attention, and his eyes flicked to his wife as she dumped out her purse on the table. His brain couldn’t absorb the words exchanged between her and May, but he realized the two tube shaped things Pepper handed over.
EpiPens!
Pepper always carried those for her own strawberry allergy. Thankfully, she was very careful and hadn’t ever had to use them until now.
Neither of them had ever considered the first time using them would be for someone other than her.
May uncapped both of the pens, said something to Peter, who nodded, even though he was now gasping for air. With expert technique, May jammed both of the uncapped pens into Peter’s thigh and held them. There was an audible click, and Peter suddenly gasped in a full breath, his face becoming a normal color.
The ringing died down slowly.
“…yeah he’s coming around!’ Happy said into the phone, presumably to Dr. Cho, his eyes never leaving the scene. “…his aunt’s an RN… it looks like it’s working…”
Rhodey stood up, his suit engaging and forming around him, save for the faceplate, as he went to Peter. “Kid, I’m going to pick you up and were gonna fly to the compound.” Peter nodded and let the colonel scoop him up.
“Will the medicine even last long enough to get there?” Happy asked.
“We don’t have any other choice.” Rhodey flipped the faceplate down before blasting off through the front door, just missing a startled family that was coming into the restaurant.
Tony was only just realizing he still hadn’t moved. Things seemed to just happen after Rhodey left with Peter. From what felt like miles away, he heard murmurings of patrons around him. Oh yeah, there were other people there.
Happy was tending to a visibly distraught May, who had let the professional mask fall, and was now in worried-parent mode. The couple stumbled out the front doors of the restaurant to the parking lot, where Tony could now see flashing lights of the ambulance someone must’ve called.
Then there was a hand shaking him, and the sound of loud crying. “Tony, come on. We’ve gotta go.”
His body reacting at last, he looked to see Pepper standing over him, their wailing daughter balanced in her hold. All he could do was nod and shakily stand up, following her out of the restaurant. Absentmindedly, he took his credit card out and slapped it onto the hostess stand as they walked out; he could worry about dealing with that later.
~~~~
He’d truly lost count of the times he was sitting in the Medbay waiting area while Peter was in surgery or was unconscious. The kid was reckless, and danger was never too far away.
But now as he sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair, his back screaming at him to change position, he couldn’t wrap his head around such an unforeseen danger. A danger they should have taken into account.
Or maybe, he realized, it was his total freeze up in the face of said danger.
“Tones?”
Slowly, Tony lifted his head to the source of the familiar voice. Rhodey stood next to him, his face creased with concern. All he could do was gesture to the empty seat next him and waited while his friend got situated. Rhodey let out a grunt as he sat down, his leg braces whirring as he did so.
“Honeybear, remind me to get these uncomfortable things replaced.” He murmured, his gaze lowering to the floor.
Rhodey nodded, placing a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “He’s going to be okay.”
Tony just shook his head. “Mint. Peppermint can kill spiders in large enough quantities. The bite must’ve done something to trigger it as an allergy.” He dropped his face into his hand, rubbing at his temples. “I overlooked that, and to make matters worse, completely froze up back there. My mind just went blank.”
“Don’t worry about all that, man. We got here just in time, and-”
“But what if you hadn’t?” Tony suddenly exploded, startling himself, as well as Rhodey. “What if you weren’t there, or you didn’t have the nanotech, or… or if Pepper didn’t have those EpiPens, or if the double dose wasn’t enough, or…”
Rhodey gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You don’t need to worry about the what-ifs! This is what really happened- I was there, I had my suit, Pepper’s EpiPens worked, May had the foresight to take Peter’s metabolism into account and give him both shots, and he’s going to be okay.”
He’s going to be okay. He’s going to be okay.
Tony inhaled through his nose as he tried to let those words absorb into his mind.
“…I didn’t do anything to help.” His voice almost caught in his throat.
“There wasn’t much you could do. You can punch aliens, you can stop bleeding, but an allergic reaction is something you didn’t have any control over stopping.”
He bit his lip. Rhodey was right, and Tony himself had admitted that, even while it was happening.
However, now he also realized the one thing he could’ve done.
“I could’ve called a suit, though.”
“I know… but I could tell you were caught off guard, so I jumped in to fly the kid here.”
“It should’ve been me scooping him up…Peter needed me to be functional, but instead I was just a helpless witness to it all!”
Rhodey exhale. “It doesn’t matter who flew him here. I know you, and I know that deep down, you probably had some notion that staying to the side was the best in the given situation.”
“That sounds like you’re just really reaching to try to make me feel better…”
“Yeah, maybe so. Or maybe I’m trying to get you do what you need to do now.” Giving his friend’s shoulder another squeeze before dropping his hand, Rhodey continued. “You can worry about this later. The important thing is, he’s stable. He’s awake. Bruce and Cho are already talking about developing extra strength EpiPens for him, and we’ll all need to be careful about avoiding having peppermint around the kid. For right now, though, I think Peter would really benefit from having you at his side while he recovers.” The braces whirred again as the colonel stood up, offering his hand to Tony. After a moment of hesitation, the genius took it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
As they started down the hallway to Peter’s Medbay room, Tony remarked, “Morgan’s gonna be disappointed that she can’t have mint chocolate chip after all.” This earned him a laugh from his friend, a laugh he couldn’t help but echo.