Work Text:
Marmaduke was, by any reasonable standard, a coward.
Tony had adopted him eight months ago from a shelter that described him, generously, as ‘reserved’, which turned out to be shelter-speak for ‘will retreat under the nearest piece of furniture at the sound of a doorbell, a sneeze, or existential dread in general’. He tolerated Tony, mostly, in the way of a dog who’d decided one human was an acceptable long-term arrangement. He tolerated FRIDAY’s voice, having apparently concluded it posed no physical threat. Everyone else – visitors, Pepper, and notably, Peter – got a wide, suspicious berth and a spot underneath the couch until they left.
Which was why, on the particular Tuesday Peter showed up to the compound looking distinctly unwell, what happened next qualified, in Tony’s professional opinion, as a genuine anomaly worth documenting.
“You look terrible,” Tony said, by way of greeting, watching Peter shuffle into the common room wrapped in his own jacket like it was doing more work than a jacket should reasonably be expected to do.
“Thanks. Just a cold, I think. May made me come here instead of staying home alone since she’s got a double shift.” Peter sniffled, dropping onto the couch with the careful slowness of someone whose head was pounding. “I promise I won’t get you sick, I’ve been pretty good about not touching stuff-”
He didn’t get to finish the sentence, because Marmaduke, who had been lurking in his customary spot under the side table since Peter walked in, emerged with none of his usual hesitation and hopped directly onto the couch beside him.
Both Peter and Tony stared.
“...Okay, that’s new,” Tony said slowly.
“Is he gonna bolt? He usually bolts.” Peter held very still, the way you did around a skittish animal, clearly bracing for the dog to reconsider and vanish back under the furniture at any second.
Marmaduke did not bolt. Marmaduke, instead, turned in a slow circle and settled directly against Peter’s side, chin resting on his leg with a contentment that looked, frankly, nothing like the dog Tony had lived with for eight months.
“He’s never done this,” Tony said, genuinely bewildered, crouching down to get a better look, as though proximity might reveal some hidden explanation. “He’s never once gotten on furniture I wasn’t already sitting on. He looked at Pepper for four seconds too long once and hid for the rest of the night.”
“Maybe he just likes me today?”
“Maybe. Or-” Tony paused, something clicking into place. “Actually, dogs can smell illness, you know. Changes in body chemistry, elevated temperature, that kind of thing. There’s actual research on it – service dogs get trained to detect blood sugar crashes, seizures, all sorts of things humans can’t consciously notice in themselves. It’s entirely possible he’s not being friendly so much as he’s clocked that something’s off with you and decided the correct response is proximity.”
“So he’s not cuddling me because he likes me, he’s cuddling me because I smell like a walking medical emergency.”
“I mean, when you phrase it like that it sounds less charming, but essentially, yes.” Tony settled onto the couch on Peter’s other side, watching the dog with something between scientific curiosity and genuine fondness. “For what it’s worth, I choose to interpret it as him liking you specifically enough to override eight months of very consistent cowardice. That feels like it should count for something.”
Peter, despite the pounding head and the raw throat, found himself smiling, one hand coming up to scratch gently behind Marmaduke’s ears – an act that, on any other day, would have sent the dog scrambling for cover within seconds. Today, he just learned into it, eyes drooping half-shut, entirely unbothered.
“Hi, buddy,” Peter said softly, voice thick with congestion. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Marmaduke, in response, sighed the deep, theatrical sigh of a dog fully settling in for the long haul, and pressed himself even more firmly against Peter's side.
The rest of the afternoon unfolded with the dog as a constant, unlikely fixture – trailing after Peter to the kitchen when he got up for water, curling at the foot of the couch when Peter lay down properly to nap, and, in one particularly startling moment, actually resting his head on Peter’s stomach when a coughing fit rattled through him, staying exactly there until it passed.
“I think he’s doing a job,” Tony said, watching this unfold with something like wonder. “Like, an actual, self-assigned job. Nobody trained him for this.”
“Maybe he just gets it,” Peter said, voice muffled against the couch cushion, one hand still resting on the dog’s back. “Like, being the shy one. Being the one who usually keeps his distance because it feels safer. Maybe he recognizes something in me needing exactly what he doesn’t usually offer, and decided to make an exception.”
Tony considered that for a moment, something in his chest going soft in a way he wasn’t fully prepared to examine too closely. “That’s either a genuinely profound observation about interspecies empathy, or you’re extremely feverish and reading way too much into dog behaviour.”
“Probably both,” Peter admitted, laughing weakly, which turned into another cough that Marmaduke immediately, dutifully repositioned himself for.
By early evening, Peter’s fever had ticked up slightly, enough that Tony insisted on an actual thermometer reading instead of the back-of-hand method, and enough that the dog’s vigil took on a slightly more serious edge – no longer just lounging, but genuinely alert, ears perked at every small sound Peter made, nose occasionally pressed briefly against his cheek in a gesture that looked, for all the world, like checking in.
“A hundred point two,” Tony reported, setting the thermometer aside. “Not dramatic, but I’m keeping an eye on it. You want soup? I make a genuinely excellent soup, I’ve had a lot of practice this year specifically.”
“Soup sounds good.” Peter shifted slightly, careful not to dislodge the dog, who had draped himself with surprising thoroughness across as much of Peter’s lap as physically possible. “Is he gonna be like this every time I’m sick now? Because if so, I might start looking forward to colds a little.”
“We are absolutely not encouraging that logic, but yes, if this is a pattern, I suspect you’ve just acquired yourself a very specific, very reluctant nurse.” Tony headed for the kitchen, pausing at the doorway to look back at the two of them – Peter half-asleep against the couch cushions, the dog pressed protectively against his side, both of them settled into something that looked, despite the circumstances, remarkably peaceful. “For the record, kid, I think it’s less about the illness specifically and more about you. He’s spent eight months deciding almost everyone’s a threat until proven otherwise. You’re one of maybe three people he’s decided are safe. Sick or not, that’s not nothing.”
“That’s a really nice thing to say about a dog who once hid from me for forty-five minutes because I sneezed too loud.”
“He’s grown as a person. Or a dog. The terminology’s a little unclear, given the context.” Tony disappeared into the kitchen, and Peter, left alone with his unlikely, devoted companion, let his eyes fall shut properly, one hand still resting on Marmaduke's back, feeling – for reasons that were probably at least partially fever-addled but felt true anyway – thoroughly, unexpectedly taken care of.
By the time Tony returned with the soup, both Peter and the dog were fully asleep, curled together on the couch in a configuration that made absolutely no logistical sense for either species involved, and Tony, phone already out to take a picture he fully intended to keep forever, decided the soup could wait exactly as long as it needed to.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” he murmured, mostly to himself, snapping the photo before settling quietly into the armchair to wait them both out. “Guess everybody’s got somebody they’ll drop their guard for. Even the cowards.”
Marmaduke, without waking, shifted slightly closer to Peter’s side, as if in agreement.