#this story is sprawling and I only mildly regret all my choices

[uefb]

OUT-OF-CONTEXT POWER COUPLE (I love them, your honor)

from approximately Ch 21 (not yet published) of this fic

[whumphoarder]

Karmaitis

Summary: Peter fakes sick to help Tony get out of going to an important event, but then later ends up actually sick. His mentor is a bit slow on the uptake.

Word count: 3,043

Genre: Sickfic, whump, hurt/comfort, humor

Link to read on ao3

A/N: I definitely took some liberties with this prompt, but hopefully you still enjoy the story :D Thanks to @xxx-cat-xxx & @sallyidss for beta reading and giving me ideas, and to @fandomsficsandfeels for inspiration for the plotline!

“I can’t believe this, Tony,” Pepper whispers from just inside the room’s threshold. Her back is to Peter and her voice is quiet enough that if it wasn’t for his enhanced hearing, he wouldn’t have registered it. “You’ve known about this award ceremony for months, and now, two hours before it starts, you’re telling me you can’t go?”

“I’m sorry, Pep, but what am I supposed to do?” Tony says, and Peter can hear the distress in his voice. “The kid’s practically coughing up a lung, and FRI says he’s running a fever—I can’t leave him alone like this.”

Peter pushes himself up from where he’s currently sprawled out on the living room sofa, his arms trembling from the effort. “No, no M’s’r Stark…” he rasps, “you can go. I’ll be fi—” he cuts himself off by hunching forward to hack out a few more horrible-sounding coughs.

Tony, dressed in a suit that Peter figures could easily pay for several months of his aunt’s rent, is beside him in three quick strides, immediately wrapping an arm around Peter’s shoulders to push him to a more upright position.“Hey, hey, easy, kid, easy…” he instructs, rubbing a comforting hand up and down on Peter’s back.

Pepper’s mildly irritated expression softens into one of genuine concern. Her long sparkly gown swishes behind her as she moves over to locate Peter’s water glass on the coffee table and perches herself on the edge of the sofa in front of him. “Here, take a sip,” she says gently.

As soon as the current coughing fit is passed, Peter nods gratefully to her and takes the glass with a shaky hand. “Thanks…” he croaks.

Pepper sighs, but there’s a sad sort of smile to her eyes now. She smooths a few of his curls back out of his eyes. “I’m really sorry you’re feeling so bad.”

Peter feels his face flush slightly. It’s one thing to have Tony see him like this, but it’s another thing entirely to have Pepper Potts witnessing. “It’s really not so bad,” he protests weakly. “I’ll be okay, I just—” He quickly places the glass back down as he breaks into more coughs.

Frowning, Tony presses the back of his hand to the kid’s slightly sweaty forehead. Peter shivers at the touch. “Sorry, kiddo, but May would have my head if she knew I left you alone in this state.” He shudders a bit. “That woman may be sweet, but she’s also terrifying.”

Peter can’t help but bark out a hoarse laugh at that. It’s true that May laid out some pretty strict guidelines before leaving Peter in the Starks’ care while she visits her college friend in Seattle, and he’s fairly sure that letting him die from bronchitis while Tony receives this year’s Green Energy Champion award would violate a few of those.

Turning back to his fiancée, Tony gives her a regretful look. “I guess I could ask Happy to stay with him, but…”

Pepper shakes her head. “No, you’re right,” she concedes. “He’s sick, and until Sunday evening, you’re his temporary guardian. You have to stay.” She gets to her feet again and straightens her dress back out. “I’ll accept the award for you and smooth things over with the organizers and the press.”

Tony stands up as well to plant a quick kiss on her lips. “Have I ever told you that you’re a lifesaver?”

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Lifesaver? More like your entire National Guard service.”

While Tony waves her off, Peter lowers his gaze down to the blanket spread across his legs, picking at a piece of fuzz with his fingernails. “I’m really sorry…”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Pepper assures, her tone kind. “It’s not your fault you’re sick—just kind of inconvenient timing. But I’ll figure it all out, don’t worry.” With a humorous huff, she adds, “This is far from the first important event Tony’s missed.”

“Hey, I resent that,” Tony grumbles. “I’ve been much better about that stuff lately.”

“True,” she allows, giving him an extra peck on the cheek. “It’s been nearly a decade since you blew off the Queen of England.”

Peter’s eyes widen, but Tony only rolls his own at the kid in response. “Oh please, as if you would want to fly six hours to drink some tea from a fancy cup with an elderly lady for some international magazine spread...”

“Anyway,” Pepper goes on, “I’d better get going. Good luck you two.” Glancing to Peter, she adds, “Feel better.”

Tony and Peter wave their goodbyes and Pepper makes her way out to the parking garage. They keep their eyes glued to the TV screen, which has been playing Brooklyn Nine-Nine reruns in the background, for several minutes before FRIDAY breaks the silence.

“Boss, Ms. Potts’ car has left the property. She is en route to the ceremony.”

“Oh thank god,” Peter breathes out, immediately untangling the blanket from his legs and pulling the single-use heating packs out from under his hoodie. “I’m about to keel over from heatstroke here. You know spiders can’t thermoregulate well.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “I was monitoring you—your temp barely even hit 100 that whole time. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“You owe me one,” Peter quips, rubbing at his throat. It’s actually pretty sore now from all the fake coughing. “I lied for you—to Ms. Potts of all people.”

“Technically, you never lied,” Tony points out, holding up his index finger. “You just presented her with some misleading information and she came to her own conclusions. Totally different.”

Peter quirks an eyebrow. “Is it, though?”

“It is,” Tony declares. He unknots his tie and tugs it out from his shirt collar before tossing it onto the coffee table. “Ready to finish your webshooter upgrades?”

“Yeah, alright,” Peter agrees. He gets to his feet with a small groan, feeling stiff from having sat curled up for the last few hours to really drive home the performance.

Ordinarily, this kind of deception isn’t something that Peter would endorse, much less participate in. But something about Tony’s reluctance to attend the event tonight seemed to run a bit deeper than the simple explanation he’d given Peter about having “better things to do” and these types of events being “so boring they’ll make your eyes bleed” would seem to suggest, so he’d agreed to play along.

(Secretly, Peter’s pretty sure it has more to do with the fact that the presenter is a man named Patrick Milton, whom a quick google search revealed to be a long-time friend of both Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane. That would definitely explain the way Tony’s eyes darken and lips press together a bit tighter every time Milton’s name is mentioned.)

“Let’s go, kid! Time’s a-wastin'!” Tony calls, moving in the direction of the workshop doors. He seems much more chipper already, and that alone helps to confirm to Peter that he made the right choice. “It’s not every day we get to play hooky.”

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Peter replies with a grin.

X

Over the next few hours, Peter and Tony tinker with the webshooter design, tweaking one mechanism or another to add different features. It’s exactly the kind of project Peter would usually be all over, but the longer he stares at the parts of the contraption on the table before him, the more he just wants to go back to the sofa and resume their Hulu marathon. A headache is setting in now and he’s weirdly tired, almost shaky, though that can likely be attributed to low blood sugar from the meager three bites of canned soup he pretended to struggle to swallow down earlier at lunch.

He figures he should probably stop Mr. Stark pretty soon to remind him that dinner is a thing that should happen (his mentor is notorious for working through meals and that’s something that just doesn’t fly with enhanced teenage metabolisms), but Peter’s stomach is feeling decidedly “off” now and food is rapidly losing its appeal. Not to mention he’s awfully warm all of a sudden, despite having stripped to only a t-shirt now.

“Hand me a three-eighths wrench, will you?” Tony asks without looking up from the project.

Peter nods, hopping up from his stool. But the moment his feet touch the ground, a cloud of darkness rolls over his field of vision and he wobbles where he stands. “Whoa…” he whispers, gripping the workbench for support.

Tony glances up and his brow immediately wrinkles in concern. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Peter replies, blinking a couple of times to clear his vision. “Stood up too fast.”

Tony glances at his watch. “I guess it is getting pretty late.” He sets down his tools and wipes his greasy hands off on the towel. “I’ll order us some dinner. Pizza sound good?”

Peter’s stomach twists at the thought and he grimaces slightly—pizza definitely does not sound good at the moment. “Uh, maybe something else...”

“What do you want then?” Tony asks. He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through it. “Sushi? Chinese? Indian?”

Each suggestion causes Peter’s stomach to churn and his face to drain a bit further of color. “You can just get something for yourself,” he mutters. “I think I might have the rest of that soup...” Or nothing, he thinks. Nothing is sounding rather good at the moment.

Tony rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “It’s just us now. You don’t have to put on a show anymore.”

“I’m not,” Peter protests. He presses his fingers to the throbbing spot near his eye. “I’m just not feeling super great…”

“Yeah, sure kid,” Tony dismisses with a disbelieving scoff, both of them moving toward the exit. “Hit the lights, FRI,” he commands.

Tony takes the liberty of ordering them both dinner from a local restaurant (“I got you a cheeseburger”, he informs Peter, who merely grunts in response) and then heads upstairs to take a shower. Meanwhile, Peter shuffles into the living room and curls up against the armrest on one of the sofas, tugging the throw blanket around him tightly. He’s cold now—shivering, actually. When did it get so cold in here?

Despite the aching in his head and the uneasiness in his stomach, his eyelids drift shut and he finds himself falling asleep.

X

“Hey, Pete, wake up.”

Peter groans and tugs the blanket up around his shoulders a little further, burrowing his face into the pillow. He hears the crinkle of a paper bag and the smell of greasy burgers and fries wafts toward him, causing his face to scrunch up.

“Food’s here,” Tony’s voice continues. “Better hurry up and eat before Pep gets back.”

“Hmph…” Peter manages to open his eyes and sits up on the couch, trying to blink away the bleariness. He feels like shit.

Tony tosses one of the paper-wrapped burgers unceremoniously into his lap. “Nice bedhead,” he remarks. “That’ll definitely help with our cover story, which by the way is that you had a nice quiet evening napping on the couch and taking your spidey-kid strength cough medicine and that’s why you’re on the mend now.” He tosses a few fries into his mouth.

Peter hums a bit. He’s only half listening—mostly he’s just trying to keep his breaths even. Maybe if he just holds very, very still, he can quell the growing queasiness in his gut.

Plopping himself down in the armchair, Tony flaps his hand as he goes on. “Tomorrow we can spin some BS about your super healing being responsible for your miraculous recovery… yada, yada.”

The burger still sits on Peter’s thighs, untouched. He blinks at it a few times and then has to swallow down the bile that’s starting to creep up his throat. Nothing has ever looked less appetizing in his life.

As Tony starts to unwrap his own burger, Peter suddenly comes to the conclusion that if he so much as sees that damn burger, he’s going to be redecorating the carpet. It’s probably only fair to give the man some kind of warning.

Peter draws in a careful breath. “Um, Mr. Stark?” he mumbles. “I feel kinda—”

FRIDAY’s voice interrupts over the speakers, “Boss, Ms. Potts has just pulled into the parking garage.”

Tony’s eyes widen and he scrambles back up to his feet, stuffing his burger back into the paper bag. “Shit. She must have left early.”

He grabs Peter’s burger as well (much to the kid’s relief) and shoves it back into the sack along with the fries, throwing him a regretful look as he does so. “I’m sorry—I’ll sneak you something once she’s upstairs.”

“’S’fine....” Peter murmurs as Tony hurries out of the room with the food. His mentor is out of earshot before Peter adds, under his breath, “Think I’ll jus’ go puke now...”

Peter’s mouth is rapidly filling with saliva and he figures he’s got about a minute, tops, before catastrophe strikes. He’s torn between wanting to move as slowly and gingerly as possible in the hopes that his meager lunch will stay down, and the feeling that he should just run for the nearest bathroom and pray that he makes it.

He ends up failing at both.

Easing himself up from the couch, Peter manages to take three steps before his stomach lurches. He leaps forward and changes course for the trash can instead, barely managing to get it under his chin before he’s retching miserably into it.

Between gasping breaths, Peter can hear two sets of footsteps approaching.

“Yeah, he sounds much better now,” Tony’s voice floats down the hallway in his direction. “The meds helped a lot. I think I’ll just let him sleep in tomorrow and his healing factor should kick this bug for good before—“

Both Tony and Pepper stop abruptly in the room’s threshold. Peter shoots his flabbergasted mentor a pained look before dropping his head back into the bin and gagging again.

Before he can resurface, Peter feels a gentle hand on his back. “Oh, Peter…” Pepper soothes. Addressing Tony, she whispers, a little accusingly, “I thought you said he was doing better.”

Snapping right out of his daze, Tony quickly moves over to join them. “He was, but that was before.” He grabs a hold of Peter’s upper arm. “It’s alright, I got him,” he tells her, starting to maneuver Peter toward the bathroom. “C’mon, kiddo, let’s get you sorted out…”

Feeling too weak to protest, Peter shuffles shakily in the direction Tony guides him, still gripping the trash can tightly to his chest.

Pepper casts them both a worried look. “Maybe we should call Cho.”

“He probably just coughed so hard he made himself sick,” Tony explains. Catching Peter’s gaze, Tony shoots him a look that’s somewhere between baffled and pleading. If Peter wasn’t so focused on walking in a straight line at the moment, he might have found it funny. “Right, Pete?”

Peter merely shrugs in response as his mentor ushers him into the bathroom.

“See? He’ll be just fine,” Tony promises. “I’ll take it from here. Thanks, honey.” And with that he shuts the bathroom door behind them, leaving Pepper in the hall.

The second they’re alone, Tony releases Peter’s arm and turns to face him. “What are you doing?” he whispers, dumbfounded. “I mean, I admire your commitment here, but she was totally buying it already. You didn’t have to go this far.”

Swaying slightly, Peter grips the sink counter to steady himself. “No,” he croaks. “I’m sick.”

“Right,” Tony agrees, nodding. “You’re sick. But we agreed on taking the respiratory route here, so suddenly going off-script is—”

Peter’s stomach clenches again. He pushes Tony aside and stumbles toward the toilet, yanking the lid up and leaning forward over the bowl before retching yet again.

When the current round of heaving tapers off, Peter glances up to see Tony staring at him, sudden realization dawning. “Oh, shit.” He moves his hand up to feel Peter’s overly-warm forehead. “You really are sick.”

“Told you,” Peter rasps. He’s still trembling, so Tony grabs the kid’s elbow and helps lower him down to sit on the floor beside the toilet. “This always happens…” he mutters.

Tony’s brow furrows. “What always happens?”

“It’s like my body knows when I’m faking,” Peter explains. “Tries to help with the act. Gets a little too enthusiastic.” He pauses to close his eyes and press his palm to his still aching forehead. “In fourth grade, May and Ben told the school I had chickenpox the week before summer break so we could go on vacation to Lego Land before all the prices went up.” He swallows hard. “Except I got a really bad fever the next day and we missed our flight.”

“Fuck…” Tony runs a hand through his own hair, exasperated. “I’m sorry, kid.”

“Yeah, and one time I faked sick to get out of a Spanish test and the next week I had tonsillitis,” Peter goes on, feeling his stomach starting to cramp again. “I’m telling you, karma sucks.”

“But I put you up to this,” Tony protests, his face stricken with guilt. “It should’ve been me who got sick then.”

Shrugging, Peter wraps one arm around his middle. “S’okay. Like you said, my healing factor will fix it soon.” He gives a weak grin. “Plus, now we don’t have to worry about Ms. Potts doubting the authenticity.”

Tony huffs out a quick laugh. “Yeah, now we’re just left with explaining why your ‘bronchitis’”—he puts air quotes around the term—“has suddenly morphed into something that’s got you puking your guts up.”

Peter grunts as he scoots a little closer to the toilet again, the nausea returning. “Yeah, I dunno...” He drapes his arm on the rim of the bowl and rests his heavy head on it as he awaits the next round. “Tell her it’s a spider thing?”

With a sigh, Tony sits down beside him and places a hand on the kid’s back. “I’m going to make this up to you somehow.” He starts rubbing gentle circles on Peter’s sweaty t-shirt. “You and May still up for that trip to Lego Land?”

“Sounds good, Mr. Stark…” Peter murmurs before gagging into the bowl again.

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