Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

a/n: old oneshot that i wrote while dealing with a 104.7 fever and i am not responsible for any incoherencies. hey guys hows it going i just started college and i am going to lots and lots of doctors appointments every week (unrelated to the fever)

He hasn't felt like this since he was thirteen going on fourteen, and his muscles ached and he had cold-shakes and he just kept thinking, shit, May just got her new job, she doesn't have health insurance yet— and, oh, he'd been nursing an infected spider bite. Radioactive, specifically.

Giving May a big ol' smile and convincing her that he felt fine, she could definitely work, he'll be okay— and then going unconscious for twelve hours at a time, kind of thinking he was going to die.

Obviously, he didn't die. Actually it felt like he did kind of the opposite, 'cuz then suddenly he had like, abs, and no asthma, and he could sit on the couch and actually see every pixel of May's cheesy medical dramas without having his (broken, taped) glasses.

And also he could do things like avoid bullets. Or not avoid bullets, bleeding all over Flushing Avenue, and still live to tell the tale. This is how, two-ish years later and at the ripe age of sixteen, he knew he'd live through whatever nasty virus this was, too.

Viruses be damned, though, he'd rather take a bullet.

He felt like shit. Capital S-H-I-T. The Bo Burnham song reincarnated into his sweating, fleshy form. His eyes burned, everything ached, and he was pretty much resigned to lying completely still on his lumpy twin-sized mattress and taking shaky, measured breaths until he fell asleep.

He's pretty sure the fever's gotten worse since May left this morning, and he was only able to convince her to leave to begin with because it had been low. A measly 100. Not great, but not the worst either.

May had given strict instructions before she did finally backtrack out the door: keep down as many fluids as he could, and to check his fever every two hours. Call her if he needed anything. And Peter said, "Okay."

Now, he's been so-so with the first instruction. He had a pitcher— literally, a pitcher. The kind that store a gallon vat of iced tea or lemonade, or god forbid iced tea-lemonade in the summer— and he filled it to the brim with water and had just been sipping at it.

This seemed insane, and kind of was, but he didn't want to keep getting up to fill a puny 12oz water glass when his legs felt like they were about to fall off, and his bed was so warm, and the outside world was so cold, and the pitcher worked, damn it.

But he'd finished that an indeterminate amount of time ago, somewhere after 'the-neighbors-are-still-watching-Curb-Your-Enthusiasm' time but before 'my-eyes-feel-like-they're-not-real' time. Either way, his neighbors have moved on to watching Scrubs, so clearly it's been a while.

As for the second one, the thermometer is on his bedside table, and he thinks he checked his temp a few times, maybe, but he keeps forgetting the results. And he keeps forgetting if he actually checked his temp or if he just thought really hard about checking his temp and his brain decided to keep those thoughts as the word of God. (Also, he really likes the word 'temp.')

He should probably check his fever again. He doesn't really know what time it is— he's been using Scrubs episodes as a clock, and he's may be hallucinating but he's pretty sure he's slept through at least half a season. Or there were a lot more Christmas plotlines than he remembered.

Unfortunately, all the evidence points to the fact that Peter must resort to step three. Call May. So makes a half-hearted series of motions, all shivering violently as the blanket lifts up to expose his skin to the air, and grabs his phone off the charger.