Chapter Text
Spider-Sense was great. They were an extra helping hand in fights and gave him the heads-up when shit was about to hit the fan. He would’ve been dead ten times over if he didn’t feel that dull thump at the base of his skull, that warning clearing away every other thought on his mind to make itself known, and the fact that his body, more often than not, moved without him fully registering what he was moving away from was great too. All in all, Peter would say the pros outweighed the cons. Unfortunately, the cons were hefty.
Sometimes, his senses just went off, and danger was nowhere to be seen. They could sense there was something wrong; they could scream it as much as they liked, but there wasn’t anything to run away from. That’s when they turned from a handy trick to anxiety on steroids. He’d be put on the edge of his seat, his head swivelling as close to a full circle as he could get it, and nothing would get him to settle until it went away on its own.
When Peter first woke up, he assumed he’d been hit with a case of the latter. He’d darted out of bed and whipped around a few times trying to find anything that seemed untoward but nothing was out of place. He could hear and smell May causing chaos in the kitchen. She wasn’t out of the habit of swearing under her breath yet so he got an earful of colourful language without meaning to. A buzz so loud it drowned out every thought that wasn’t GET HELP GET HELP RIGHT NOW IT’S NOT SAFE. He could almost see the letters painted on the back of his eyelids as he squeezed his eyes closed. He strained his ears to catch any sign of danger but came back with nothing more than the regular NYC background noise. Cars, car horns, someone yelling at someone else and the footfall of thousands of people. No gun cocking, no squelch as a knife embedded in someone’s stomach and no screams of terror. Just New York.
Peter sucked in a deep breath and counted but it didn’t calm the buzzing. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, successfully making himself see stars and not much else. He had a theory why his senses were screaming and he didn’t like it one bit.
Today he was going to his internship. He hadn’t thought the cover story would ever develop into an actual job, but Tony was insistent on it. He guessed it was so he couldn’t refuse the money Tony threw his way to pay for Spider-Man expenses like new backpacks and food, but it’d been great so far. Well, right up until their last session together. He hadn’t been paying attention as Tony looked over his shoulder at his recent blueprints.
“These are really good, kid,” he’d said. Instead of saying thank you or explaining the concept further, Peter had very stupidly replied,
“Thanks, Dad.”
The whole world stopped and for some truly brain numbingly stupid idiotic reason, he’d chosen to look up at Tony to gauge his reaction. Completely mortified. Probably regretting this whole internship altogether. Maybe he was planning to launch Peter into the sun.
“Uh, sure. Keep up the good work.” He’d smacked Peter on the back a touch too hard and scrambled over to the furthest side of the workshop. It was silent until Peter made an excuse to leave early, and they hadn’t spoken since.
He was half expecting to be stood up, but Happy text him the night before reminding him about the pick up time. That should’ve been a good sign but he had the awful feeling that this would be the last time they’d make the drive and Tony would give him one last session to impart the rest of his wisdom then end all communication. If he was lucky, Tony would only see him when he screwed the pooch again.
“Peter, are you up yet?”
“Yeah,” he answered shakily. This was awful. His skin felt like it was on fire, strangely focusing the most in the centre of his back. Anxiety doesn’t usually do that. He frowned to himself and went searching for a thermometer. Maybe if he ran a fever he could postpone seeing his mentor again and he hoped by that point, it would just be another cringey memory for the pair of them. His search in the bathroom didn’t turn up much but thankfully did remind him to clear away the mess he’d made of the first aid box. Hopefully May hadn’t already seen it. “May? Where’s the thermometer?”
“You broke it, remember?” Right, he’d messed up his web fluid and accidentally made one hell of an exothermic reaction. He was lucky he didn’t set the whole apartment on fire. May subsequently banned him from making it at home. “Why?”
“I think I’ve got a fever!”
May poked her head into the bathroom with a bemused look. He understood exactly what it looked like. He knew that this is something he’d absolutely pull to get out of dealing with the dad incident, but he really was sick this time.
“Feel my forehead. I’m burning up!”
“You’re flushed because you’re embarrassed,” she replied. She folded her arms as she leaned against the doorframe, almost smug for not believing a word he said. “You’re not going to ruin your future over accidentally calling Tony dad. Imagine if I let you give up on school when you called your teacher mum.”
“This is different though. I really am sick.”
“Peter, you’re going to your internship, and it’s going to be fine. Water under the bridge. Just like the ferry, the whole crashing his plane business and whatever else you haven’t felt the need to tell me yet.”
“Just feel my forehead,” he begged, showing the action with his own hand as if she didn’t understand the command. It did feel really warm, almost go see a doctor warm. She just shook her head with a bemused smile.
“Get yourself ready. Happy will be here any minute, and he’ll have a fit if you make him get stuck in traffic.”
Happy was no more sympathetic. He did try to get the man to understand, that he really was coming down with something and he should stay far away from Tony. His response came in the form of the partition rolling up, and the conversation died there. He thought about opening the door and just making a run for it but that wouldn’t end well at all. If anything, it would just blow things so far out of proportion there’d be no hope of fixing it.
Left to his own devices in the backseat, Peter took stock of himself. He had a fever, sure, but that didn’t come without a few wonderful friends deadset on making him suffer. He’d felt his blood boil enough times to know that.
He was immediately drawn to the pain near the top of his back right in the middle of his shoulder blades. He’d brushed it off as soreness from smashing through the window but maybe it was a related symptom. What comes with fever and back pain? Whilst he wasn’t a biologist, he’d been a sick kid for long enough to google all the weird and wonderful diseases that displayed mundane symptoms at three in the morning. Thank you, Mayo Clinic and WebMD.
Kidney infection came to mind first, but the back pain was too far up for that. Unless he had a short torso? Or high kidneys? Could you get high kidneys? Nevertheless, he’d been able to pee just fine, and he didn’t have any abdominal pain to add. He wouldn’t be all that jazzed about being presented with a triple chocolate milkshake he usually went crazy for, but he could find a way to stomach it so that ruled out associated nausea.
Spinal infection would cover the whole back. An abscess maybe? That would include the fever and back pain, but shouldn’t there be other symptoms? The pain was like a low throbbing, similar to a bad pimple that only ever appeared in the unreachable places or when you got lumped with a trainee nurse for your vaccinations, and they inject too far into the muscle.
Regular flu could cause back pain, but he didn’t really get the flu anymore, and he wasn’t showing other flu symptoms. Well, there was the decreased appetite but a decreased appetite for him just made him a normal person, and the anxiety of trying to figure out what the hell was going on with him would turn anyone off food. He wished his senses came with a description of what to look for. A hint would go a long way.
If he could see what was going on behind him, he might have better luck guessing a diagnosis. He briefly considered taking his shirt off and trying to get a picture with his phone, but he was 90% sure Happy could still see through the partition. Happy already didn’t believe he was sick, so he’d have a whale of a time explaining himself. It might go away on its own. It could be completely unrelated, and he really was trying to find any reason to get out of seeing Tony. He wouldn’t put it past himself. Still, his senses shrieked at him. He put his earphones in and tried to ignore it.
The drive felt like it’d never end. The fever invited chills to the party, and he had to curl up into a ball on the backseat with the heat on full blast to feel some semblance of warmth. Laying down was a double edged sword unfortunately, as warm as it kept him, he felt dizzy from the gentle rock of the car stopping and starting. He wasn’t one to get travel sick, he wouldn’t be able to do half the flips and dives he did as Spider-Man if he were, so he assumed that was a developing symptom from the lack of appetite. His spider senses had grown from an annoying fly trapped somewhere in the room to a bug stuck in his ear canal, threatening to burrow into his brain if he didn’t get it out soon.
It couldn’t be anxiety. Anxiety didn’t scream at him like this. Embarrassment didn’t make it this difficult to stay awake or soak his clothes with sweat.
“Happy?” he mumbled weakly. When he first got in, he still had bundles of energy to spare, but it appeared to have leaked out and soaked into the seats. “Happy?” he tried again, but he was running on empty, so he couldn’t go any louder than his first call. “Something’s wrong.” He could feel sleep threatening to take him, against all the fear he felt for himself. Perhaps when they stopped, and he didn’t immediately shoot out, Happy would realise there was something really wrong with him. He hoped he got the chance to say ‘I told you so’ and milk it for all its worth.
Happy rolled the car to a stop and got out to open Peter’s door. The kid had been silent for a majority of the ride, apart from his brief attempt to get out of going to the lab, which wasn’t normal but not entirely unexpected. This whole dad thing would have any teenger cringing until their fifties and trying to avoid any chance of it being brought up again. If Tony hadn’t been fretting about it all week, subsequently annoying the hell out of him, then maybe he’d take some pity on Peter and take him back.
He opened Peter’s door and frowned when the teenager didn’t jump out. Again, not entirely unexpected, but he was still put off by it. Peter just had too much energy to sit still for long and this drive always ended in him crawling out of the back like he’d been caged there for days without food or water. He peered inside and had to stop himself from laughing at the audacity of this kid.
“Pretending to sleep won’t make me take you home,” he said, unable to keep a chuckle at bay.
Smartest kid in New York, maybe America at this rate, and he was pretending to sleep when playing sick didn’t work. Peter didn’t stir. He had to commend him on his acting. If he didn’t know any better, he would think Peter was passed out for the day. Then again, he might’ve actually decided to nap when he realised he couldn’t convince Happy to turn around. Maybe that’s why the heating was on full blast, since he ran colder than most.
After a minute of staying perfectly still, the novelty was beginning to wear off.
“C’mon kid, sooner you get out, the sooner it’ll be over with.” Again, Peter didn’t stir. He squinted at the teen and ducked further inside to get a better look. It was hard to tell with how tightly Peter had curled up on himself but he was definitely shaking. “Peter?” Please God, make it so the kid isn’t crying because he was going to be absolutely useless. “It’s not that big a deal. In a month, you’ll forget it ever happened.” In a month, Tony might come to his senses and realise he liked being called dad.
He tilted his head to catch a glimpse at Peter’s face, finding it heavily flushed, dripping with sweat and pinched in pain. His hand came to rest on Peter’s forehead before he realised what he was doing but the moment it connected, he had to retract it immediately. Peter wasn’t warm. He was burning up. His shirt that Happy originally thought was just a darker shade of blue was a differently colour purely from how much he was sweating. He tried to think of what colour it had been when Peter initially got in but he couldn’t focus on the memory for long enough. Sue him; there’s a mutated teenager with an inhuman fever in his back seat.
“Peter!” he shouted, shaking his shoulder. He drew out a groan and not much else. “Shit, kid, you better be light.”
Tony had spent most of the morning pacing in the lab, stopping only to pace in the foyet awaiting Peter’s arrival. He knew he was mishandling the whole dad thing. He could’ve made a joke in the moment to dissolve the tension but he’d been too shocked to speak and by the time he thought of something to say, Peter was stuffing his things into a raggedy backpack with a rushed goodbye. He could’ve sent a text after but he couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t be misunderstood by the anxious ball of nerves that was Peter Parker. He could probably pick apart a good morning text into some admission of hatred given the time.
He knew he’d left it unaddressed for too long yet even as he waited for Peter, he didn’t exactly have a plan on how to fix it. Should he lean into it? Should he pretend it never happened in the first place? Should they talk about it? He wished they would just forget about it until he was ready.
Well, the universe was cruel in how it answered his wish as Happy came running through the foyet with Peter limp in his arms. Tony swore his heart stopped when his eyes landed on the teen. He looked awful and he’d seen him after the Vulture fight (and apparently after a building fell on him).
“What happened?” he demanded.
“Found him passed out in the backseat- Tony, something’s really wrong.”
“Boss, it appears Peter’s temperature has exceeded 103. I suggest immediate medical attention. Would you like me to alert a designated medical professional?”
“Yes! Obviously yes! Happy, get him to the medbay.”
“Really? I was planning on just standing around!” Happy snapped. He adjusted his grip slightly and set off running. Peter was light for all the muscle he had, but he was still a bundle of dead weight in his arms. Tony knew he wouldn’t drop him though. He had full faith in that.
“Fri, can you get me a scan as we move?”
“Only preliminary.”
“Do it anyway and send it directly to Cho. Tell me too whilst you’re at it.”
“Temperature currently reading 104.9 and climbing. Previously healed laceration in the interscapular region may be the cause. There appears to be debris trapped beneath the skin.”
“Did you manage to wake him up at all?”
“Got a groan.” That wasn’t nearly enough to ease his nerves.
“And he was fine when you picked him up?”
“A little red, and he said he had a fever, but I thought he was just worried about today. I swear-”
“If you knew, you would’ve floored it, I know. He’s got accelerated healing. His body probably went ape shit when it found the debris and never stopped.” He looked down at Peter, his face too lax for comfort. “Hopefully that healing keeps his brain from melting.” He’d never been a religious man, but for all the trouble that Peter got himself into, he was starting to consider converting.
After setting Peter down, Dr Cho immediately sent them out and got to work. She was a one-woman show Tony wished he could bear witness to, as he was relegated to waiting in the hallway. He got a brief glance at it when she left for a second to wheel in one of the new surgical robots Tony invested in. Nearly die a few times, and you start throwing money at whatever new medical invention promises to keep you alive that bit longer. He’d sent Happy to pick up May, all speeding-ticket-covered, of course. Not because he thought Peter would kick the bucket…just in case he was wrong.
“He just wanted me to feel his forehead,” she whispered. She’d been silent when Happy escorted her to the hallway. She attempted to go into the medbay, but Tony held her back. Whatever was happening behind those doors wasn’t something they should see if they wanted to keep their sanity.
“May-”
“We don’t even have a working thermometer. He broke it and I never got around to replacing it. I thought, well, I’ll get one when I get sick. I never stopped to think about him.” She brushed her fingers through her hair anxiously. “If it was nearly 105 by the time he came in, what’s it at now?”
“Dr Cho is the best of the best. I wouldn’t trust him with just any old doctor.”
“Suppose it’s a good thing in some way. If he’d ended up like that at home, I wouldn’t know what to do,” she muttered. “I saw the first aid kit on the sink, but he gets scrapes all the time. Why didn’t your suit alert?”
“It would’ve been superficial at the time. We agreed I wouldn’t send a suit for every bump and bruise.”
“Could he have done anything?”
“Maybe. It’s in a difficult spot, and I think this is probably the only time I’m gonna say I get why he’d disregard it. As I said, it would’ve been superficial. Hell, it might’ve healed over by the time he got back.”
“So this could happen again?”
“I’ll have Karen alert for debris in wounds. She wouldn’t unless it was life-threatening, but,” he shrugged. It seemed pretty life-threatening now. “I should’ve considered this.”
“We can only do so much to protect our kid,” May told him, giving him a comforting pat on the back.
“We certainly do.”
“Take it the dad thing is gonna be on the back burner a bit longer?”
“Thank God.” She smiled despite herself. They stared at the frosted glass. It was going to be a long day.