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Something had been bugging Tony about Peter. He didn’t talk much about the bite that made him Spider-Man, but when he did, he emphasised how bad it was. The fever was so high he felt like he was on fire, the aches were so horrible he could barely move, and he spent hours throwing up undigested food minutes after chewing it. At first, Tony thought he’d been exaggerating, but the more he considered it, the more he felt the opposite.
Peter exaggerated, sure. Ask him about the latest bank robbery he stopped, and he would hype it up like it was the fight of the century, when in reality it lasted about five minutes, including the webbing-up time. No, the way he spoke was more like how anyone would talk about their worst sick experience. Tony would have the same cadence when he spoke about his heart and the surgeries it took to keep him alive, or when going through the joys of sobering up.
It took Pepper leaving a pile of paperwork on his desk for him to actually investigate it. There was a surprising amount of admin work when it came to being a vigilante, even more so when you were a vigilante without a public civilian identity. Legal loopholes, trademarks, copyright, all that fun stuff. Amid companies asking for Spider-Man’s likeness and businesses insisting they had a red-and-blue pizza sub with spider-shaped toppings long before Spider-Man ever broke onto the scene were the medical documents. Fight enough people, and you’ll end up in the hospital a handful of times- no biggie. So Tony went searching for a paper trail.
The early stuff came up first. Peter’s birth, vaccinations and a bunch of medical conditions that the spider bite seemingly cleared up. He was surprised to find out how often Peter had been in hospital during his early life, all of it seeming rather serious and something he probably should’ve found out from the teen rather than FRIDAY’s screening, but he supposed it wasn’t that important anymore. There was a physical about a year before he got bitten, then his prescriptions were cancelled a few months after the bite and then nothing. Completely blank.
If he really was that sick after he got bitten, surely he would’ve gone to hospital. Maybe they wouldn’t immediately pick up on him mutating, but they would’ve documented it anyway. There might be a follow-up with a general practitioner Peter never bothered going to, but there should’ve been something. He knew May well enough to assume if she knew he’d been as sick as he said, she would’ve driven right up to the hospital entrance and cuffed the first doctor she saw to figure out what the hell was going on with him. Yet the evidence said nothing had happened.
Tony thought about Peter’s story again and realised nowhere did he mention seeing a doctor. In fact, it lacked anything about any sort of medical personnel looking over him. May was mentioned, but now he was fixated on the times he heard the story, and it became obvious that May’s involvement only came in when he specifically asked how she reacted. Ben never came up, but he’d assumed it was a sore subject.
How would neither of them notice? The same way May never noticed her nephew was Spider-Man until she stumbled across the fact. Peter was a bad liar, but your first thought wouldn’t be ‘oh, his DNA must be mutating’ if he suddenly skipped school and stayed in bed all day. You’d think he was sick, though. You wouldn’t leave it be.
It doesn’t add up. None of it does, so why doesn’t it? What if there’s something they’re missing? Tony never thought to do a checkup on the kid. He just assumed he’d be fine, and it wasn’t like he had the time when he first met Peter; then it slipped his mind after that. He could accept that he let that fall through the cracks, but he was certainly going to search for it now. So what do you do when you think a teenager is lying to you?
“Hey Tony, what trouble is he in now?”
“Working on it. Is Peter with you?” Better make sure the liar wasn’t within earshot if he wanted the truth. He could imagine Peter panicking and webbing her phone to a wall before he could think of a better idea.
“He’s at school.” Right, it’s a weekday. “Why?”
“I need to pick your brain on something. Do you have the time?”
“I’m on break, so if you don’t mind eating noises, I’m all yours.”
“Great, I’m just going through his medical history, but I can’t see much from when he got bit. He told me he got sick, but that’s about it. Teenagers,” he replied, forcing a casual tone.
It would probably be fine if he didn’t know, but he didn’t like not knowing every little thing it was possible to know. Especially when that thing was a teenager with mutated spider DNA the likes of which the world hadn’t seen before, because believe Tony, he definitely looked in every nook and cranny for a similar case. She sighed, and he quickly got the sense he wasn’t going to get the answer he was after.
“I wouldn’t know. When he got sick, I was out of town, and Ben was looking after him,” she explained. That explained the lack of May in his story. “He worked so much back then.”
“Do you remember anything about his symptoms?”
“Ben said he was sick. He’d tried to get time off work, but they wouldn’t let him. By the time I got back, he was fine, and we chalked it up to a bad flu or food poisoning.”
“I saw his prescriptions were cancelled after. Why’s that?”
“We thought he grew out of it. I’m sure that’s not how it works, but you’re always looking for a miracle when your kid is sick. He was finally healthy; I didn’t want to pick apart why. Especially when paying for it all was a headache in itself.”
“I thought you had insurance.”
“Oh, you’re adorable. You wanna guess how much a pint of milk is? I hear rich people love that game.”
“Yeah, yeah, I see it’s a dumb question now.”
“Good. Insurance is like putting a drop of holy water in the Hudson and expecting it to turn the whole thing holy. It’s pennies off the dollar. We got it through work, but they certainly didn’t make it easy. You wouldn’t believe how many times I had to insist Peter was our next of kin because it only covered us and our kids. Don’t tell him this, but we really couldn’t afford for him to get sick again. The debt would’ve ruined Ben and me, even with insurance skimming off the top.”
“Well, he’s part of Stark Industries now, for better or for worse. It’s not something you’ll have to worry about,” he stated.
“Just my luck, he gets the best health insurance out there right after healing himself of half the shit that got us into debt in the first place,” she chuckled, then it went sour. “Why are you looking at his medical records?”
“Paperwork.”
“Since when do you actually work?”
“Since Pepper threw it on my desk. I’m not the biggest fan of sleeping on the couch, so I thought I might as well get stuck in.”
He was about to hang up when he was struck by another thought. Peter hadn’t seen a doctor, but he’d been Spider-Man for a while now. He’d been so focused on the bite that he hadn’t even thought about the other times he really should’ve been checked out, the Vulture incident being the primary example. Even before that, Tony had sent him home after the fight in the airport, so focused on Rhodey that he hadn’t even thought about making sure the kid got checked out too.
“May, has he seen a doctor since he got bit?”
“Not that I remember, no. He said he’d heal just fine as long as he ate enough. Why?”
“I’m gonna need to borrow the kid tonight.”
“Don’t leave him without a suit this time,” she stated with enough severity to send his anxiety spiking.
“Not that type of lecture. Call it morbid curiosity, but I wanna get the story straight.”
“Mr Stark? Why did Happy pick me up?” Peter greeted as he walked into the lab, his shoulders hiked to his ears as he tried to suss out any danger.
He wracked his brain for his latest mistake, but all in all, he couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong. It’d been a boring week in terms of Spider-Man activities, and school was school. Today wasn’t lab day, though. Happy had just appeared outside the school and told him to get in without explaining a thing. There had to have been something.
Tony gestured to one of the stools, and his stomach dropped. He’d done something to warrant a conversation. He stared at the seat like it was going to transform into a terrifying monster ready to consume him.
“Take a seat. We need to talk.”
“I’m good standing.” He’d be even better running away and hiding until it all blew over. Not that he’d have much of a chance. The building could lock itself down within seconds, and the windows didn’t open. He could probably smash through the glass, but he’d rather not dig himself any deeper.
“It’s not that type of talk, Underoos,” Tony assured him, yet he still felt on edge as he took the stool by his mentor’s side. He pulled his sweater sleeves down over his palms so he could fuss with the fraying edges. It almost felt protective. “You haven’t been telling me the whole truth, and I think we should remedy that. I’m honest with you so you’re honest with me. Sound good?”
“Sounds good, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s kinda hard to omit details when I’ve got a camera strapped to me whenever I go out,” he argued.
“It’s about the spider bite.”
Ah, his least favourite topic. He barely liked to remember it, let alone repeat it to someone else. He instinctively sought out all the exits he’d love nothing more than to escape through, but alas, he could only prolong the inevitable. Whenever he got sweaty, he’d have the brief fear that the fever was coming back to finish the job. The memory was made worse by blurred memories of Ben doing his best.
“Look, I get it’s a touchy subject, so I’ll make this as easy as I can for you. When you’ve told me about it, were you exaggerating?” If anything, he’d gone easy on the descriptions for the sake of not making Tony lose his lunch.
There was one point when he really thought he’d die. He hadn’t spoken a word of it to anyone, but he’d never forget, even through the fevered haze, the way he tried to force himself to accept it. Ben was at work. He wouldn’t be back for hours. Peter knew he was going to vomit, and he didn’t want to lie in it for hours, so he tried to get out of bed. He’d collapsed after taking a step, flopping down onto his dirty carpet, and the force of hitting it had basically knocked the bile up from his stomach. He was face down, unable to stop himself and threw up. Then he started to choke.
It couldn’t have been long, but he’ll never forget the synthetic fibres scratching his face, the warmth of the vomit, the chill running through him, the frantic thought of MOVE, but he couldn’t get his arms to coordinate. It’d hurt to breathe it in with all the crud that hid between the wefts, and he could almost follow the burn from his throat down into his lungs. His fingers had twitched, his leg spasmed, his head rolled slightly.
A surge of energy ran through him, giving him enough strength to roll onto his side and cough up what he’d breathed in. He’d lain there next to the puddle, unable to draw his eyes away from the acid. Tears bubbled up in his eyes, and he’d curled in on himself. He pleaded with whoever was willing to listen to make it stop. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want his uncle to walk in and find him dead, blaming himself for missing that precious window of time when Ben could’ve saved him.
In the early morning, it passed. He thought he’d died at first. He’d been convinced that if he opened his eyes and looked around, he’d look back on his corpse. He didn’t, obviously. Instead, his body had changed. He stuck to surfaces, crushed metal with ease, and he could hear the entire city rush around him. In some way, it was just as bad. Deafening, blinding, he couldn’t move for fear of breaking something, but he was alive. That was better than nothing.
He got used to it and came up with half-convincing lies that Ben and May ate up, then he put it all behind him.
“Kid?” Peter blinked, feeling the fuzz from spacing out bleed away.
“Hm?”
“I asked if you exaggerated.”
“No,” he answered quickly. “It sucked.”
“If you were that sick, why didn’t you go to the hospital? Why didn’t Ben take you?”
“How did you know Ben was looking after me?”
“I spoke to May about it.” Great, he couldn’t wait to go home to that bombshell.
“Not cool, man! You should’ve just asked me!”
“I’ve asked you before. Your DNA got mashed together with a spider’s, and you’ve been telling me the story like you had one too many shots at a friend's party.”
“Why does it matter?”
“I get why you wouldn’t go now, and I get healthcare’s a bitch, but why not then? Before you woke up with all your spidery-ness?”
“You’ve already got your answer,” he replied. “Healthcare’s a…b-word. They tried to hide it, but I was there when May made the phone calls and when we picked up medication. I knew we were in deep. I didn’t…I don’t know. I just didn’t think of it as an option. I figured I’d feel better eventually, and then I did.” He shrugged with a ‘what can you do’ expression.
“What if that didn’t happen?”
“Then it wouldn’t. I was fine, wasn’t I?”
“You might not be next time.”
“It’s not like I can afford to go to a doctor, Mr Stark.”
“You can under the insurance you’re entitled to as my intern.”
“No, I mean like I can’t go to a doctor because they’re gonna alert the government,” he stressed.
“Not my doctors.” Peter nodded because there was no getting out of it. He supposed it would be nice to get that weird click in his neck looked at. “You can’t just figure it’ll get better and then do dick all.”
“Worked out though,” he mumbled.
“It won’t always,” Tony told him sternly. “I need you to know that you can see a doctor. I need that to stick in your head, paint it on the back of your eyelids or something. It has to be your first thought when you get knocked down.”
“I don’t know, Mr Stark-”
“You do know. Same way you know I’m not letting it go. I’m not having you die over a gallstone or something.”
“Those are deadly?”
“Maybe to spiders.” Peter rolled his eyes with a grin. “One of these days you’ll tell me the full story.” Yeah, probably when he told him about lifting the building…so never.