Chapter Text
Dr. Banner made good on his promise and Peter found himself sitting on an exam bed in the tower’s medbay again two weeks later. Last time was fine, quick and easy, Peter tried to remind himself. His right leg jumping up and down betrayed the sense of calm he tried to emit in front of Tony and Bruce though.
“Okay, here we go, round two” Bruce announced, pulling a rolling table closer to where Peter was sitting. Peter carefully eyed the syringe that was sitting on top of it.
“You ready, Peter?”
“Mhm” Peter wasn’t sure he trusted his voice not to be a high-pitched squeal so he decided to stick with a hummed affirmative instead.
Bruce didn’t hesitate and everything pretty much went exactly like last time. Alcohol swab, Peter being too tense, Tony gently grabbing his hand, Bruce waiting for Peter’s arm muscles to relax and then a small poke. When Bruce retracted the needled Peter jolted “Ouch! What is that, I can feel the stuff spreading inside of me!”
“You can?” Bruce grabbed a StarkPad and started typing something as he mumbled on “Ok, that’s interesting”
“Some vaccines can have that effect I’m afraid. It should pass soon though.”
Bruce grabbed the empty syringe and disposed of it in a sharp’s container. “Again, 15 minutes in med bay and then you’re good to go ok?”
“We got it Doc.” Tony said and then turned to Peter to figure out dinner plans. They had agreed on what Tony dubbed the “Peter Parker Poking Promise”, enabling Peter to pick where they’d order takeout whenever Bruce poked him. Tonight he just felt like good old Shake Shack.
“Boss, Peter Parker has triggered med watch protocol.”
Tony groaned. “FRIDAY? Ngh.. what time is it?” he slurred.
“It is 3:27 am, Sir”
Tony turned onto his side in slow motion to find the light switch for his bedside lamp. “What was that about a protocol?”
“Peter Parker has triggered med watch protocol, Sir. His temperature has passed the 100.4 °F mark, qualifying as a low grade fever, placing him under medical observation now.”
Tony was suddenly wide awake.
“Fever? Is he awake?”
“No, Sir.”
“Get Bruce informed and on the line for me.” Tony said as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Certainly, Sir.”
A sleepy Bruce was on the line not even a minute later.
“What do we need to do Bruce?”
Bruce stifled a yawn before answering lazily “First of all, we need to relax, Tony. It’s only a low-grade fever and so far he seems to be sleeping through it. Sleeping it off is the best he can do. If it makes you feel better you can go check on him, make sure he has water, keep some fever reducers ready in case it climbs up above 102.2°F. But really Tony, let him sleep it off.”
Tony had FRIDAY display Peter’s temperature on his Stark Watch. He went to grab some fever reducers and water and slowly pushed open the door to Peter’s bedroom, taking in the sleeping form in front of him. Peter’s head was barely peeking out from the covers, he had pulled them all the way up his nose.
Tony considered waking him to get him to drink something but fought off the urge to do just that and ask him how he felt in favor of letting him rest.
He set the water and pills on the night stand and exited the room quietly.
Back in bed he couldn’t help put watch the numbers on his StarkWatch. The number climbed slowly but steadily for a while before settling in at 101°F.
He asked Friday to disable the alarm in the kid’s room and set an alarm for himself alerting him in case Peter’s temperature reached 102°F before slowly drifting off into a light sleep.
Peter emerged from his bedroom, dressed in jeans and t-shirt backpack in hand. Tony’s brows furrowed as he spotted him “What do you think you’re doing?”
Peter gave him a puzzled look.
“Uhm. Getting ready for… school? I guess?” Peter answered tentatively as he made his way over to the pantry to grab some pop tarts, unsure whether this was the right answer to Tony’s weird question.
“No you’re not. You had a fever last night, Pete.”
“I did??” Huh, explains the overall sweaty and gross feeling this morning, he thought.
“Yes you did. Probably a side-effect from last night’s shot. In fact- “ Tony said, checking his StarkWatch “your temperature is 99.4, still slightly elevated, so you’re staying home today.”
“I’m not staying home from school today for a slightly elevated anything, Mr. Stark.” he emphasized his words plopping the two poptarts into the toaster a bit more energetically than needed “I got an English test and I can’t miss it.”
“Sure you can and you will. I already got a note from Dr. Cho.” Tony said standing up, filling a glass of water for Peter and handing it to him.
“How did you-? Mr. Stark, you can’t just decide this like that. Mrs. F makes the hardest make up tests on the planet. It’s impossible to get an A on them. I studied so hard for this one and I need that A to keep my A in the end of year report card.”
“Underoos, it’s not a good idea to go to school with a fever, it’s normal for temperatures to be down in the morning before they go back up, I’d really feel better if you’d-“
“Well, I’m glad you would feel better, Mr. Stark. Have you noticed that you never even asked me how I felt this morning? Isn’t that something you’re supposed to do when someone had a fever and is supposedly too sick to go to school?” Peter said, emphasizing the words “too sick” with airquotes “Well, for your information, I feel great.” The irritation was now clear in his voice as he tried to fish the poptarts out of the hot toaster. “Perfectly capable of going to school. Which I’m about to be late for by the way if I don’t get going soon so- yeah.” Peter felt kind of bad for calling Mr. Stark out on it like this but he really, really could not risk having to take Mrs. F’s impossible make up tests and he also felt just a tad proud for standing up to Mr. Stark at the same time. After all, he wasn’t a child anymore and perfectly capable of making decisions like this on his own.
Tony studied the kid before him for a moment. He did look ok, sure, a bit tired maybe, but he didn’t like sending him off with an elevated temperature like that and he certainly didn’t like the attitude he was giving him.
“I’ll make you a deal” he eventually said, fumbling with the watch on his wrist before holding it out to Peter “You wear the StarkWatch so I can keep an eye on your temperature and if it gets any higher than 100.2°F, I’m coming to pick you up.”
Peter hesitated for a second unsure whether or not having Mr. Stark track his vitals all day would be such a good idea. He knew compromising wasn’t the billionaires strong suit though, so being offered this deal was already more than Peter could’ve hoped for. He grabbed the watch and strapped it around his wrist.
“It’s currently the only prototype of the new model, try not to break it, will you, kid?” Tony quipped, signaling their brief argument was over. Peter rolled his eyes theatrically but then smirked. “You know I can’t promise that, Mr. Stark.”
Period 1 and 2 went by just fine, but all throughout AP Biology, Peter kept stealing glances at the watch as he watched his temperature rising slowly. The thought of Tony watching the steady increase at the same time made Peter’s stomach churn. “Come on” he whispered to the watch as if it could actually change anything “we just got to make it to period 5 for the test”.
When Peter’s temperature climbed up to 99.9°F in the beginning of Physics in period 4, he knew he wouldn’t make it all the way to the test. He couldn’t just watch the temperature climbing, he could feel it too. He could feel it meddle with his concentration already. But he knew taking the test with a low grade fever was still preferrable to the make up test so he made a decision. As soon as his temperature reached 100.1°F he would take the watch off. Maybe he was lucky and Tony wasn’t watching a live feed but only had an alert set up for when it reached 100.2°F and would therefore never know? Besides, Mrs. F. didn’t allow any smart devices to be worn during tests anyways so really it wouldn’t even be his fault that he took it off. Huh, loop hole, Peter thought and giggled silently. And he could just say he forgot to put the watch back on after the test.
When period 5 rolled around and students settled in their desks in anticipation of the test, Peter wasn’t so sure anymore that exploiting the earlier detected loop hole was such a smart decision. His temperature had been exactly 100.1°F when he had taken the watch off in the restrooms a few minutes ago and he couldn’t help but wonder where the numbers would be at now. He had almost been late to the beginning of class because he relished the feeling of splashing cold water on his face so much he almost missed the sound of the bell.
Now he just felt weird. Light-headed. Wishing himself back to the restroom with the wonderfully cold water. It became hard to concentrate but he knew he only had to make it through the test.
The test was hard, really hard. He had studied stylistic devices until he had them coming out of his ears but these essay questions were killing him. What he wouldn’t do for a simple multiple choice test right now. Like the ones Mr. Leinert had always done in 5th grade. Yeah, those were really nice. Sometimes Mr. Leinert even arranged the correct answers in a pattern so once you had the first ones figured out you could sort of follow the pattern. And Mr. Leinert always told the best stories about his dog, “Sunday”, and all the trouble he got into, like the one time where he stole another dog’s toy at the park and …
Peter jerked up and realized his thoughts had been drifting. Checking the clock on the wall he suddenly started to panic, he hadn’t even gotten through half the questions and there were only twenty minutes left. He briefly looked around. Everybody else was deeply in thought, apparently not noticing the sweaty, hot, unfocused kid next to them. When he turned to look over his other shoulder his eyes met Ned’s. This was their first shared class of the day and Ned’s eyes widened upon taking in his friend for the first time today. He gave him a look of confusion and mouthed a “You ok?”. Peter answered with a quick nod and a thumbs up before turning back to his own paper. He was surprised to find the words on the paper melting together.
Tony was enduring the third meeting of the day, ears only half-listening, eyes glued to the StarkPad in front of him. But he was currently ignoring the so called “comprehensive” summary of projected sales that was pulled up on everybody’s StarkPad, instead he was focused on watching the tiny box in the upper right hand corner visible only on his StarkPad that was showing a single number. The number had been rising slowly but steadily for the last hour. It was currently sitting at 100.0°F. Tony already knew what was going to happen. He almost wanted to just go and leave right now but he had promised Pepper he’d actually wait for the agreed on number before he left the meeting.
The number switched to 100.1°F and Tony’s impatience rose with it. He silently debated whether or not he should just leave already – not like he was paying attention to the boring suit currently speaking anyways, when the tiny box in the upper right hand corner of his StarkPad suddenly displayed something unexpected. “Connection lost.” It took Tony all but two seconds to realize what happened “That little shit” he bit through gritted teeth before throwing Pepper an apologetic look and excusing himself from the meeting.
On his way through traffic he tried calling Peter’s cell five times. He knew chances were slim of the kid actually picking up since cell phones were supposed to be kept in lockers at all times but he tried anyway, urging Happy to step on it when he reached Peter’s voice mail for the fifth time.
When they made it to the school he instructed Happy to wait and made a beeline to the front office. He had no idea where to find the kid within that building.
After explaining that it was a family emergency and the secretary double checking that the Tony Stark was actually listed as Mr. Parker’s secondary emergency contact she finally supplied the information he was looking for.
“He’s currently in period 5 English with Mrs. Foster. Her class room is in the East Wing, classroom E/2/5.”
Ahh, the English test. That would probably explain why Peter had tried to avoid Tony finding out about his temperature, having made it through the day thus far he probably didn’t want to risk being dragged out right before the test.
With the help of the map the secretary had provided him with he made his way to aforementioned classroom, about to knock on the door when his eyes fell on a sign outside the door. “Test in progress! Quiet Please!”
Tony groaned. Right. He probably shouldn’t just barge into a room full of angsty teenagers taking an important test. He checked his watch, the actual currently available model of the StarkWatch, since he’d given the prototype of the unreleased model to his absolutely irritating kid. Ugh. That kid could expect an earful once he was done with his test. 10 more minutes until class was over. Might as well wait. Letting out a deep sigh he leaned back against the lockers opposite of the classroom door with his arms crossed. Unbelievable, he thought. Standing in a high school corridor. Waiting for the bell to ring. It was quiet. And boring. Gosh time really does tick by more slowly in a high school than it does on the outside, he thought.
Two classrooms down a door opened and a kid walked out, carrying a huge sign labeled “hall pass”. The boys’s blue eyes widened with recognition when they spotted the man leaning against the lockers and then looked like they were about to pop out when Tony gave him a smirk. Tony nodded his head down in the direction the kid was going, ushering the boy to move along. The kid vanished in a bathroom down the hall a few seconds later.
Tony was just about to take his phone out to pass the last few minutes of waiting boredom when he heard a flurry of activity break out in the classroom in front of him. He was trying to decipher what was being said in there when suddenly the door was flung open and he heard someone yell “Get the nurse!” before a teenager raced out the door, completely oblivious of the world’s most famous billionaire standing there.
Tony took a second to snap out of his confusion before he bolted into the classroom, heart racing when his concerns proved to be true. Because of course the kid they had to call the nurse on, the kid passed out on the floor, would have to be his kid.
“Peter!” completely ignoring the surprised murmurs and looks, he made his way through several rows of chairs and desks and students towards the still form on the floor.
The teacher was currently feeling for a pulse when she spotted the foreign presence amongst her students.
“Excuse me, Sir, this is a classroom, you cannot be in here. Out, right now.” she said with a no-objections-permitted-look. Tony was actually impressed. Most people threw all the usual rules out the window when meeting a celebrity for the first time, this one apparently didn’t take any bullshit. He immediately liked her.
“I’m his emergency contact” he supplied and the genuine concern in his eyes when he looked down at Peter must have been enough to convince her to let him stay for now.“What happened?”
“We were about to finish a test when he collapsed to the floor.”
“He ran a fever last night.” Tony explained, taking Peter’s wrist to check the pulse himself. He looked at Peter’s wrist and on top of his desk, looking for something. “Where is his watch?” he asked irritatedly when he couldn’t find it.
Mrs. Foster pointed to a box on her desk. “No smart devices during tests. It’s in the box.”
Tony went to the box, silently cursing himself for the fact that he hadn’t even thought about the possibility of a rule like this some schools might have, grabbed his watch and wrapped it around Peter’s wrist.
“Friday, vitals” he said curtly.
To everyone’s surprise – except Tony’s of course - the watch around Peter’s wrist started speaking. “Heart rate slightly tachycardic at 110 bpm, temperature elevated at 102.7°F, blood pressure in normal ranges at 115/70. Medical attention advised.”
Tony couldn’t believe what he heard. How had Peter’s temperature jumped almost three degrees within just one hour?
His attention snapped back to the teenager when Peter moved his head from side to side and groaned.
“Peter?” Tony said, gently holding Peter’s face in his hand. “Can you look at me, buddy?”
The nurse chose this exact moment to make her entrance, slightly out of breath, apparently she had tried to get here as soon as she could. “What have we got?
“Peter passed out, he has a fever and a racing pulse” Mrs. Foster explained “His- uh- emergency contact is already here.”
The nurse knelt down next to Peter, feeling his forehead. She took out a penlight and shone it in Peter’s eyes when he suddenly jerked and gasped “too- gnn, bright, too bright” he whined in a low mumble, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I know honey, I know, no one likes that part. I just need you to hold still for a second, ok?” turning to the man next to her she quietly asked “Could you…?” nodding towards Peter’s head.
Tony understood and was glad the nurse seemed undeterred by his presence (and fame) and simply did her job. God, this school’s employees were anything if not professionals, he thought, plans for an anonymous donation to the school solidifying in his head.
He grabbed Peter’s head with both hands, making sure he couldn’t jerk away as she shone the light in his eyes. Peter flinched and whined quietly but the nurse was quick.
“No concussion. Let me check his neck real quick so we know he’s save to be moved.” she motioned for Tony to release Peter’s head so she could take over. Slowly and carefully she felt along his head, neck and upper spine. “Doesn’t look like a spinal. He’s ok to move.”
Tony didn’t need to be told twice. “Thank you so much, I’ll take it from here” he merely said before he lifted Peter into his arms without further ado.
“Mr. Stark, Peter should be checked out, we can call an ambulance for you if you-“
“That’s very kind, but it won’t be necessary. We have a fully equipped medical facility at the tower. Peter will receive all the care he needs.” With that he turned on his heel and carried Peter out into the hallway.
But just his luck, the second he exited the classroom, the bell rang and the hallway started flooding with teenagers.
Any student being carried out of the school would be a big deal, but Peter Parker being carried in the arms of the Tony Stark caused a commotion that could hardly be contained. “Great.” Tony mumbled, “Just fantastic.” He certainly didn’t feel like shouting at a bunch of adolescents on his way to the car but if these pubescent hobbits didn’t make room for them soon he’d certainly-.
“MOVE! Get out of the way you morons!”
Tony had to turn his head to check where the angry commands were coming from. A curly haired teenage girl was walking by his side. And he just now noticed that her hand lay on Peter’s knees, which were hanging loosely over the side of Tony’s arms.
“I said MOVE!” angry girl yelled again at a few students who hadn’t gotten the message the first time. “Stupid idiots” she added on, fiercely glaring at anyone daring to step in their way as they made their way to the main entrance.
“Thank you, Miss…?” Tony questioned carefully, utterly impressed by the natural authority the girl exuded as she held the main doors open for Tony and Peter.
“MJ”
“Well thank you, Miss MJ” Tony said with a quick smile. “Are you a friend of Peter’s?”
“Team members. Decathlon.”
“I see. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it.” He spotted Happy nearly falling out of the front seat in his attempt to hurry over when he saw Tony and Peter “We got it from here.” Tony couldn’t help put smile despite his concern for the kid in his arms. MJ, huh? He sure heard that name before. In connection to a certain vegan place that Peter was dying to try out. But his smile was short lived and replaced with a grim line of worry when the figure in his arms didn’t even stir upon being laid out on the backseat of the car.