Sick at a Party

When he woke up to a subtle and arguably ignorable fluttering in his stomach, Peter thought it had been simple excitement. Now that he was standing in Tony's ballroom unable to stop shivering while everyone else seemed comfortable—physically, at least—and nauseous at the smell of the rich appetizers on the far side of the massive room, he wasn't so sure about that conclusion.

Captain America had already made direct eye contact once tonight, so it was too late to go home without leaving a bad impression on the slowly reforming Avengers. They weren't a team again per se—in fact, Peter still hadn't earned a serious invitation to the team anyway—but they were all clearly trying to make things work again. Tony had explained privately earlier that this "party" was intended as a sort of neutral ground to help rebuild the many relationships that had gone sour before the Accords had gone through several major revisions in place today.

Peter had made the mistake of extremely tangentially bringing up the airport battle during their last attempt at mediation—"So, how does the growing giant thing work?"—and both sides had ended up flinging increasingly vicious insults until they'd had to end the meeting before any of the most important matters had even been broached in discussion. Because of that mishap, they were all under strict instruction to stick to civilian topics of conversation tonight. This was about rebuilding friendly rapport. Peter was of the opinion that Tony didn't have to jump straight to being that strict with the fractured team, but then again, he could still remember the venom in Steve's voice at the end of the last meeting with perfect clarity. So, maybe it was for the best that they weren't discussing work. It was his best ever chance to hear more about the Avenger's personal lives anyway, which was just awesome.

Or it would be awesome if he felt up to it. Instead, he was regretting coming tonight, or even getting out of his bed today at all. He spent enough time with Tony and felt secure in their relationship enough that he would've been comfortable calling off and canceling at the last minute if it had just been the two of them, but no, he just had to come down with something the one night he'd promised to spend with the entire collection of his childhood heroes. This sucked.

The atmosphere shifted until the room seemed impossibly warm. He probably needed a fever reducer, but a cup of water from next to the appetizer table seemed more doable. His enhanced sense of smell was still bothering him more than he'd like it to, so he took a deep breath and gave his best attempt at not breathing in while he darted to the table and back, returning to the far corner with his prize before he took his next desperate breath. He was a little dizzy after holding his breath for so long but otherwise unharmed by his little trip.

Peter took small sips from his cup while he leaned against the wall at a distance from the others and watched the room. The atmosphere was still awkward and a little forced, but people from opposite sides were talking, so things could be worse. No one made a move to talk to him, but that was perfectly okay with him. None of the rogues knew him really, and he wondered how many even recognized him without the mask. He might've tried striking up a few conversations himself—who's he kidding? Of course he would have—if he wasn't feeling so rough, but anything he would've said under better conditions tonight could wait for another time. As a huge point in everyone's favor, he hadn't heard a single raised voice so far.

He zoned out at some point while he worked his way through the contents of the cup. He snapped back to attention when his vision started wavering. Before he had time to react, everything around him was crowded out by the blackness blooming from a few spots until it encompassed all of his vision.

His legs swam into view and wow, he was on the floor. His stomach felt a lot worse than he remembered too. Okay. Okay, that was new. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to keep pretending nothing was wrong to avoid offending anyone. He took a second to take stock of where his arms were then moved his hands to prepare to push himself back to his standing position so he could track someone down before he got worse. He didn't get that far in his plan, though.

"On the list of people I'd expect to drink underage, you're at the very bottom, especially around people who are effectively your coworkers. What the hell, kid?"

"…What?" Peter was still reeling a little from the sudden change in altitude, and following the conversation with… Tony? It was an impossible feat right now. He hadn't taken in a word the man had said, but he didn't know if he could get out enough words to ask him to repeat himself. Tony waved an arm at him, still sprawled on the floor.

"This," he elaborated. "Sober people don't just hurl themselves into the floor for no reason. I hope you know I'm disappointed in this behavior. We will be discussing this when you're in your right mind again."

He tilted his face toward the ceiling.

"FRIDAY? Set an audio alert to execute any time Peter touches anything alcoholic while he's underage." He waited for verbal confirmation from the AI and faced Peter again. "Now that that's taken care of, let's go do what we can to sober you up."

Peter let whatever was being said wash over him largely unheard and took the hand suddenly thrust in front of his face so Tony could pull most of his weight until he was standing upright, only wavering a little in place.

"You're lucky I understand the appeal, so I'm not telling May this time," Tony droned on. Peter still wasn't catching much, but the man seemed like he was on a roll with whatever this conversation was. Good for him, Peter thought somewhat distantly. The guy didn't get passionate about conversations very often. He curled an arm around his aching stomach and hoped Tony wouldn't be too upset when he didn't remember what he was so riled up about later.

Tony had a heavy arm wrapped around his shoulder and was making him walk somewhere away from the rest of the so-called party—though he had no clue where they were going exactly—which would've been fine any other time, but he could still barely tell up from down and his stomach was violently protesting every step. He was sluggishly weighing the pros and cons of extracting himself from the hold when Tony's speech cut off and he found himself facing a trash can the next time his vision was focused enough to let him really see his surroundings. He wasn't sure what prompted it, but he also wasn't in a position to complain as his nausea finally won over his control and he jolted forward to retch once and vomit embarrassingly loudly in the otherwise silent… hallway? Room? It was hard to tell when his brainpower was largely diverted to convincing the rest of his lunch to stay where it belonged.

When he finally regained some semblance of control over his own body and he could see straight for the first time since he'd fallen, Tony was staring worriedly at him.

"How did you drink this much without me noticing while I was in the same damn room?"

"What?" Without his vision and his stomach pulling his attention away, Peter could follow the conversation more easily. He hoped Tony hadn't been on the same topic the whole time, with him just standing there and taking it. "No. No! I don't drink, Mr. Stark. I'm sixteen!"

The pointed stare didn't betray anything resembling belief, so Peter called for reinforcements.

"FRIDAY, what's my BAC?" he asked. There was a beat of silence before she reported the measurement.

"Zero."

Tony looked surprised, and Peter wondered if he should be offended.

"I think I'm sick," he volunteered, though there was really no "think" about it at this point. Tony leaned back and squinted at him, apparently taking in his appearance. FRIDAY chimed in with her own support.

"Moderately elevated temperature, vomiting, dizziness, and fatigue observed in subject. Initial diagnosis: early stages of the flu."

"That explains a lot. Guess we should get you some medicine and a bed for the night, huh kid?"