Peter Is Banned From Caffeine
Hey peeps! Sorry it's probably not the update you wanted but I promise I am working on Mending real hard! The lovely Jessiikaa15 has been tagging me in little prompts on Facebook and this is one of the results! Enjoy!
As always, everything Marvel related belongs to the MCU – I make no money off this and no copyright infringement is intended.
There weren't a great deal many strict rules at the Avengers Compound, hardly any, in fact. Easy to follow things like: if you finish the last of something, order a new one. Or, respect everyone's space except in the common room because sprawling together to watch a film is mandatory and you will get touched. But, one of the most important ones was not to give Peter coffee. Not only was the kid a coffee gremlin, but it made him ridiculously hyperactive and the teenager did not need any help bouncing off the walls – he did that on a normal day, sans coffee.
Anyone who came to stay at the Compound, no matter how short a period of time, was made aware of the rules and practically forced to swear an oath they would obey them. And for the most part, they did. It was rare that Tony ever had to remind anyone of the rules, and on the odd occasion that someone forgot to order something in when they'd used the last of it, Tony would just order it himself. Unless it was something he needed right that moment, then all bets were off and Tony would go full sarcastic asshole and start leaving notes to order more when something started running low.
But the not giving Peter coffee rule was never to be broken. The one time it had been, Tony had gone nuts. He'd been working on making a deadline for a contract with the health service that would revolutionise how health care worked and ensure everyone who entered the programme would be able to monitor their own health with a simple chip, implanted in the skin in the forearm.
He hadn't slept more than a couple of hours a night for a week, pushing himself hard to make sure he got the programme ironed out and there were cuts up and down his arm where he'd injected chips to run tests and he was so close to breaking through when Peter the Whirlwind had blasted through the lab in a hyperactive caffeine-fuelled state, thrown a tonne of words at Tony and inadvertently deleted all the progress Tony had made.
Too shocked to actually rage about it, Tony had sat there, completely dumbfounded and burst into tears. In his sleep deprived state he'd forgotten that JARVIS always backed up everything he worked on, every single keystroke was saved and any deletions were saved separately as well in case it was an accident, just like in that instance.
Peter had been horrified and his caffeine high had ended abruptly. He'd spent ages soothing Tony and promising to help him make the time back up and work on it with him until they had it back. JARVIS had called an end to the histrionics and promised that he had everything saved from before Peter accidentally deleted everything.
After that, Tony had put his foot down and made sure that everyone understood the reason the no coffee rule for Peter was in place. Thankfully there had been no repeat instances in several months. Anything that held caffeine was stocked in moderation and Peter had promised under pain of death that he wouldn't touch them.
But he dropped the ball with Steve – he hadn't counted on how little the super soldier would know about energy drinks and their caffeine content. So, when he'd come home to find Steve looking sheepish, and Nat and Clint fretting like crazy, the two spies looking like deer caught in the headlights when they spotted Tony. "Uh, Tony, we can fully explain!" Clint blabbed.
He dropped the bag he was carrying and narrowed his eyes at them. "Explain what?"
Clint stamped the pedal of the kitchen bin and Tony eyed several cans of an extremely forbidden caffeinated drink. "Please, please tell me Peter didn't drink those?"
Steve rubbed the back of his. "I'm sorry, Tony. I thought they were cans of juice or something, I didn't think to read the label when Peter asked me to grab him them."
"How many?" Tony ground out, jaw ticking and eye already twitching. "How many cans has he had? You guys realise that kids have DIED from drinking too much of that shit?"
"I bought two cases of four, and there's six cans in here," Steve said, paling when Tony's face went red in anger.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Steve! He's gonna be bouncing off the motherfucking walls probably on the verge of a goddamn heart attack!"
Clint winced. "Well, in a way it isn't that bad, but on the flip side, it's also worse."
"How Clint? How can it be worse?" Tony yelled. At that moment, a window exploded and Peter flew through it on a skateboard wearing khaki pants, an open Hawaiian shirt and a Shrek mask.
"Yippee-kay-ay!" The teen screamed. "If you're wired and you're tired clap your hands!"
Tony grabbed Peter as he skated past and yanked him close. "What the fuck, Pete? You promised me you wouldn't drink these, you know what they do to you!"
Peter shrieked and made a weird pterodactyl screech, garbled some words that Tony couldn't decipher if his life had depended on it. He hauled the teen to his room and tried to calm Peter down. It took hours before Tony felt comfortable not having to keep constant watch over Peter, and even then he'd ordered the kid to stay in his room. Tony hauled out the sofa bed and made it up, climbing in once he made sure Peter was comfy in the main bed.
He slept terribly, partly because when Peter crashed from the caffeine he snored like an elephant, and partly because he was terrified Peter's heart would stop. JARVIS' scans had shown Peter's heartrate was elevated beyond anything he felt safe and Tony kept waking up to check the kid was still breathing.
In the morning, Peter was a mess. Tony wasn't faring much better but he'd mastered the art of looking perfectly put together even when he was exhausted. He sipped his coffee and even offered Peter a mug of it. The kid took one sniff and lost his stomach down the disposal unit.
"So, I take it you're off caffeine for good?"
Peter looked miserable and nodded. "I swear I'm never touching a drop of it again. My head feels like Thor is throwing Mjolnir around it. I'm so sorry, Tony."
Tony chuckled and poured Peter some orange juice, taking pity on him. "Why did you need so many cans, Peter?"
"I was cramming for my entrance exam and I was terrified I wouldn't be able to concentrate so I fuelled up on caffeine."
Tony frowned. "Entrance exam? Peter, you don't need an entrance exam to go to university."
Peter sat down next to Tony and met his eyes. "You do if you're going to MIT. I took the exam to go to MIT, Tony."
The genius sat, dumbfounded, for several minutes before he dragged Peter in for a hug. "Oh, Petey, I am so proud of you!"
Tony's phone pinged with an alert and he opened the notification to find it was an email from MIT. He read it, smiled, and emailed Pepper to sort out the funds. "Really?" Peter asked.
"Yes, Pete, super proud. Pepper will sort out the funding for your terms, we'll make sure you get a great dorm, and I'll get you a car so you can come home on weekends and the holidays."
"Tony, you don't have to do all that. Besides, we don't even know if I got in yet, you can't plan all this stuff without my results. And even if I did get in, I don't want you spending all that money on me, I'll manage on student loans just like everyone else."
Tony scoffed and handed Peter his phone, opened to the email. "You not only got in, Peter, you beat my score. I held the record and you just smashed through it. I know I'm not your real dad, Peter, but I'd like to think we're close enough you could consider me somewhat a father figure. Let me do this for you."
Screaming nearly burst Tony's eardrums but it was worth it to see the unbridled joy on Peter's face knowing he'd gotten into MIT. He'd had no idea that Peter wanted to go there and it had never been on the list of universities Peter had been interested in.
Then, just to have the last laugh, Peter made Tony spit his coffee out. "So, does this mean I can call you Daddy?"