Saturday, September 9th, 2028
Peter wasn't sick. He wasn't. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He had a tiny cough, every thirty seconds or so. He had a headache, but it was nothing a little Tylenol couldn't cure. His muscles were definitely not achy, his nose was barely stuffed—he could breathe if he blew it every ten minutes. Peter wasn't sick.
Of course, Pops didn't see it that way.
"Peter, get back in bed," Pops said, exasperated. "What are you even doing?" Peter sat at his desk, drawing up plans on graphing paper.
"I'm not sick," Peter insisted. "I'm fine." It would have, perhaps, sounded more convincing if he had staved off the coughing fit that came between "I'm" and "fine".
"You are not fine, get back in bed," Pops insisted, walking over to his desk. He looked like he was contemplating physically removing Peter from his desk, but then he peered down at his work. "What is this?"
"Plans. For your suit. Helping Dad with this new material—s'like spandex but bulletproof," Peter said.
"Peter, your dad can work on that by himself, you don't need to be worrying over it while you're sick," Pops said, taking away his pencil and putting it down on the desk.
"Not sick," Peter replied, making a grab for the pencil, but Pops blocked his arm.
"Are sick," Pops said. "Do I have to pick you up, or are you going to go quietly to your bed in defeat?"
Peter considered grabbing onto the chair, for a moment, but he knew that eventually Pops would be able to prize him from it. Oh, what he wouldn't give at the moment to be able to stick to things. When he didn't reply, Pops sighed and started to grab him. Peter jumped up.
"Fine, fine," Peter sighed. "Bed." Pops folded his arms and raised an eyebrow until Peter reluctantly made his way back to the bed.
"You're just going to get up the second I leave the room, aren't you?" Pops asked.
"No," Peter replied innocently. Perhaps too innocently.
"Get out of that bed one more time and I'm using your laptop's webcam and connecting it to mine downstairs so I'll know when you get up," Pops said firmly. Peter gaped at him.
"That's—that's a huge invasion of privacy!"
"You're sick Peter, and I'm telling you not to get out of this bed. Go to sleep," Pops said. He turned out the lights, left the room, and shut the door behind him.
Peter grumbled to himself. Pops would hear the squeaks of the floor if he got up, but he had to get to his designs. He turned on his bedside lamp and contemplated the six feet that stood between him and his designs. Hmph. This would take a little creative engineering of its own.
Steve was tired. Tony was in California for some work thing (Steve rarely asked what—he understood maybe half of what Tony was saying when he explained his tech and his R&D work. It wasn't that Steve was bad with technology, although he wouldn't consider it his forte, it was just that Tony worked way beyond a basic level, way beyond an advanced level, and in so many different scientific fields that Steve could hardly keep up.), the Avengers fought rogue robots just that morning (fucking Richards), and now Peter was sick (and obstinate). He had a mountain of paperwork waiting for him that he'd brought home from the Triskelion so that Peter wouldn't have to be alone, and frankly some of the things that he needed to fill out the paperwork were still at base, causing him a gigantic logistical headache that would surely involve one of the junior agents having to run back and forth from his office while he waited for the necessary information on his phone.
Oh, how he sometimes longed for the days when it was a simple matter of see-Nazi-punch-Nazi-finish-mission-sleep. Not that he'd ever give up Tony or Peter—but he'd sure love to give up paperwork.
He sighed and sat down at the table again with his coffee. He'd only gone to check on Peter because he knew the kid would try this again. He'd never been ok with being sick. Tony would whine and complain and generally behave like a three-year-old. Steve would coddle him with chicken soup and cuddling (because it wasn't like Steve was likely to get sick, anyway) and his favorite movies (even the ones that Steve absolutely detested).
But Peter was another matter. Steve would happily coddle him with chicken soup and cuddling and movie marathons, but Peter would never have it. In stark opposition to his father, Peter always denied the fact that he was sick. Steve had no idea why, but it had ended in some unfortunate scenarios, like the time they'd gone to Coney Island and he'd vomited on the teacup ride because he'd been sick with the flu and hadn't said anything, or the time they'd been at Clint and Natasha's the night before and both Ana and Will ended up with fevers because Peter hadn't said anything about being sick, or the time he'd gone to school and fainted in gym class when asked to run the mile because he had a 100 degree fever and hadn't said anything!
Steve didn't understand it, and it drove him absolutely up the wall. Tony's whining and generally awful behavior when he was sick Steve could accept and could handle. He liked being able to care for Tony. He hated that Peter wouldn't let Steve care for him, and more than that, his tendency frightened Steve. What if Peter got really, really ill and he and Tony didn't notice? What if Peter, god forbid, had something like cancer and he and Tony didn't realize it until it was too late, all because Peter pretended that he wasn't sick?
Steve sighed and put down his pen. He couldn't think like this. He was just going to make some chicken soup anyway, even if Peter wouldn't eat it. He probably would, though. There were few people alive who could resist Steve's homemade chicken soup.
Halfway through cooking, Steve's phone rang. Steve practically jumped to it—Tony mentioned that he'd call when he got a chance—he picked up the phone.
"Tony?"
"Nay! I do so apologize Brother-in-Arms, but I am not the Man of Iron," Thor's voice boomed from the other end. Steve held the phone slightly away from his ear. Thor had never really gotten the hang of talking on the phone with people—he was like Ron Weasley trying to call Harry Potter (a reference Steve only knew from reading the books with Peter). But Thor wasn't stupid, so Steve was pretty sure he only did it to annoy or confuse or amuse people or something. Pretty sure.
"Oh, it's ok, Thor, what do you need?" Steve said, putting the phone between his ear and his shoulder and stirring the chicken soup.
"Paperwork! It requires your signature as team captain! I have been commandeered by the Son of Coul to obtain it from you and return to the Triskelion!" Thor replied. Steve nearly groaned aloud, but he suppressed it into a tired sigh.
"Ok, can you bring it around and I'll take a look? I can't leave, Peter's sick," Steve said.
"Oh, the mighty midgardian offspring is unwell? What a shame—I will boost his spirits and scare away the demons that plague him when I visit!" Thor said.
"That really isn't nece—" the phone clicked. Thor had already hung up. Having exceeded his exasperated sigh quota of the day, Steve just hung up the phone and put it down on the counter. "Okay then."
In a feat of acrobatics surely worthy of Cirque du Soleil, Peter had managed to wrap his sheet around his ceiling fan, and swing himself from said fan carefully, quietly onto his desk. He grabbed his designs and his pencil, held them in his mouth and swung with the sheet—
Except apparently ceiling fans weren't supposed to take the full weight of gangly twelve-year-old boys, because the mechanism hold the blades to the electronics snapped, and Peter fell to the floor with a very loud THUMP.
"I'm kind of hoping he's asleep, Thor," Steve said as he glanced over the paperwork. "So it's probably best if we just leave him."
"Ah, yes, rest is likely for the best," Thor agreed as Steve thumbed through the pages. "You Midgardians are so fragile! Requiring sleep so frequently!"
"Myself less than others, but yes, I'd generally agree with you," Steve said absently. "This looks fine, let me just get a pen." Steve wandered further into the house and Thor followed behind him. He got out a pen and then—
THUMP
"Ah! The mighty midgardian is awake!" Thor said happily, but Steve was already dashing up the stairs at full speed. That hadn't been a "I'm doing jumping-jacks in my room" thump, that had been a "the desk has fallen over and possibly squished me" thump. Steve ripped open the door so fast, he nearly tore it off its hinges. Peter was on the ground, his desk chair knocked over and the blades of the ceiling fan on top of him.
"Peter—what—" Steve said, practically speechless as he went to help his son.
"Designs!" Peter practically wailed, pointing. Steve moved his foot—he'd been stepping on them unwittingly. He went a different way and picked Peter up, setting him back in the bed.
"Did you break anything? You're still breathing, so I consider that a good sign," Steve said.
"No," Peter said, "I don't think so."
"What the hell were you doing?" Steve demanded.
"I wanted my designs," Peter said, a bit meekly now. Perhaps Steve had been a little harsh—he softened his expression and tone.
"Peter, please, the next time I tell you to stay in bed just stay in bed," Steve pleaded. "At the very least, be sane and sensible and go grab something if you want it—don't nearly kill yourself trying to get to it! Why on earth were you—what, swinging from the ceiling fan?"
"To get to my designs," Peter said. "They were still on the desk. And you told me not to leave the bed. And if I'd walked on the floor you would have heard, the floor squeaks, and you would have come up and yelled at me, and hacked my web cam, and maybe thrown my designs away or put them somewhere I couldn't get them."
"Well when you put it that way, you make me sound like a monster—am I monstrous to you?" Steve asked. "Are you really so afraid of me you'll break your neck avoiding me?" Steve's gut twisted. He knew what it was like to nearly break your neck trying to avoid your father, knew what it was like to be afraid. But thankfully, Peter shook his head.
"No," Peter said. "But I'm not sick. I want to work. And you won't let me."
"Peter," Steve said, putting a hand to Peter's forehead, "you have a fever. You're hacking up a lung. There's a mountain of tissues next to your desk. You. Are. Sick." Peter shook his head.
"I want my designs," he said. Steve sighed. He was really reaching past that quota today.
"You know your dad will still love you, still be proud of you, if you don't finish those designs today, or tomorrow, or next week, or ever, right?" he asked, because he was running out of ideas as to why on earth Peter was acting this way.
"It's not about Dad!" Peter insisted. Steve just threw up his arms, finally fed up.
"Fine! Fine! Look, I just don't get this attitude, Peter. I'm trying to help you get better. If you keep working, you're only going to make yourself sicker, and if that's what you want, fine, I give up, go ahead, work yourself until you've put yourself into a coma and are forced to rest and get better," Steve finished. He stormed out of the room and had to take care not to slam the door behind him. He knew he was being childish, but Peter was being intolerable!
Steve marched back downstairs, stormed past Thor, grabbed a pen, signed the papers, and thrust the whole document back at him while Thor watched him with a measured gaze.
"What?" Steve snapped. It wasn't like Steve to snap, especially not at people who didn't deserve it, but he'd finally just had it.
"The mighty midgardian knows that he is ill," Thor said, gently taking the document.
"I know he knows it. He knows it, I know it, the whole damn world can see that he's sick, I just don't know why he won't admit it and just rest for the love of God, is it so difficult? He drives me nuts with this stuff!" Steve said.
"If he does not wish to make the admission despite all evidence pointing to his grievous state, then there must be some reason," Thor said. "I think that I had best go—the son of Coul will be waiting most anxiously for my return!" Thor said, still watching Steve. Steve hated it when he did that. One minute, Thor was oblivious, and the next he had more insight into the inner workings of people than Natasha.
"Yeah—I'm sorry, Thor," Steve said.
"Think not of it!" Thor replied. He clapped Steve on the shoulder and then left. Steve grabbed his phone from the counter, next to the now cold and half finished chicken noodle soup. He hit the number one speed dial.
"Steve? I'm kind of in the middle—"
"Is it legal to swaddle your children past the age of newborn?"
"What?"
"Peter won't get any rest and he's sick and I give up, I don't know what to do," Steve said, practically whining.
"…well what do you want ME to do, I'm in California!" Tony said, sounding bewildered.
"I don't know—talk to him? He's working on these designs he said he's doing with you—something about bulletproof spandex, I think—he says this has nothing to do with you but I can't get him to put those papers down and just sleep," Steve said helplessly. "He's just going to make himself feel worse." For a moment on the phone, there was no answer, and Steve wondered if Tony had hung up on him, to go back to doing whatever it was he'd been doing, but finally Tony answered.
"Steve," Tony said, sounding almost amused, "this doesn't have anything to do with me."
"You could still try to talk to him! He won't listen to me!" Steve said.
"Steve. This has nothing to do with me. Peter's never acted like me when he gets sick. He acts like you," Tony said.
"Tony, I don't get sick," Steve said, confused.
"Exactly," Tony said.
"But I don't get sick," Steve repeated. Tony actually laughed.
"Oh, Cap, you're hearing me but you aren't listening at all," he said.
"Tony, I actually don't get sick," Steve insisted. "I don't come down with colds, or the flu, or any normal human viruses anymore, my immune system beats them off. Peter's just pretending he isn't sick."
"And why do you think that is?" Tony asked. "What have you always done when you've come home with a broken limb or a black eye or nasty gash or burn? You've toughed it out. You don't complain. I try to give you pain medication and you brush me off. You might not get sick, per se, but it's not me Peter's playing tough guy for. When he was sick when you were—well, gone, three years ago, he had the flu and complained loudly and often to me, and he never left his bed. I had JARVIS put his favorite movies on a loop."
"You never told me that," Steve said.
"It's kind of an oddly specific thing to talk about, don't you think?" Tony said, sounding very distracted. "Look, Steve, I'm—"
"In the middle of something, I know, I know. I'll talk to you later," Steve said.
"Bye Steve. Love you."
"Love you too," Steve replied, then hung up the phone. He looked up at the ceiling. Time for some father/son bonding time.
It really hadn't helped anything, swinging from the ceiling and landing on his butt. Now his muscles were achy, his bum hurt, and his headache raged. Not only that, but his stomach turned at the thought of the motion of the swinging, and it was all Peter could do to keep it from revolting when he thought about falling through the air. He tried to work on the designs, but he couldn't concentrate. He was sweaty and felt awful and he wondered what cruel God had ever invented germs (Loki, Peter decided on, it must have been Loki because it was always Loki's fault). There was a knock on Peter's door.
"Peter? You up?" Pops' soft voice floated through.
"Yeah," Peter said. Pops opened the door and came inside. He sat on the side of Peter's bed, and looked him over once.
"I know I don't talk about it much, but you know when I was your age, I was ninety pounds soaking wet," Pops said, his gaze a little distant. "I was always getting beaten on by the older boys—I wouldn't say I picked fights, exactly, but uh, I wasn't the type to 'choose my battles' so to speak, either. I wished I was bigger and stronger—not just so that I could stand up to the bullies a little easier, but because I was always sick. You name it, I had it. Probably the worst bit was the asthma—I couldn't even do more physical activity to get bigger or stronger because I'd have an asthma attack if I did.
"I spent a lot of time in bed. I didn't have computers or even television for that matter, so I listened to the radio a lot. I read a lot. I practiced drawing—got pretty good, if I do say so myself. I hated it, but I stayed in that bed and I got my rest, and I'm glad I did. Because if I hadn't, if I'd made myself worse—well, I might have never made it to Project Rebirth in the first place. I wasn't weak because I had to stay in bed. Being the little guy didn't make me weak—and by that same token, toughing it out wouldn't have made me any stronger. Do you get what I'm trying to say, Peter?" Pops asked, finally looking at him, his forehead scrunched up like he'd managed to confuse himself.
"You're telling me 'stay in bed, Peter' with all the finesse of an after-school special," Peter said, amused.
"Well yes—and no," Pops said, ignoring the jibe. "I'm telling you that being sick doesn't make you weak, that knowing when to stand down doesn't mean you're lacking in courage."
"I know. I—" Peter took a deep breath as he felt his stomach turn again. "—I could really use some advil." Pops gently ruffled his hair.
"You got it, kiddo," he said. "I'll bring up some chicken soup while I'm at it." Pops rose off the bed.
"No, Papa, I don't think soup is a good—" but Peter never finished that sentence. He threw off the covers and ran to the bathroom as fast as his scrawny legs would take him.
"Ok, no soup," Pops said a minute later as Peter got out his toothbrush. "Saltines and ginger ale it is."
"You want to say it."
"No, Peter, I don't."
"I know you want to say it, just do it."
"I'm not going to say it."
"Oh just say it and get it over with."
"Fine! I told you so," Pops said, rolling his eyes. Peter stuck out his mint toothpaste covered tongue. As soon as Pops left, Peter's stomach rolled again.
Ok. Peter was definitely sick.