Spider-Man Whumptober - 2023

Fever/Vomiting

(AN: The Avengers never broke up. May does not know Peter is Spider-Man, but Ned does. Also, I'm sorry, I was feeling angsty and needed to write something sad.)

Spider DNA interacting with human DNA? That isn't normal, isn't natural. 

And when Peter started getting hot flashes, or random spurts of overwhelming drowsiness accompanied by a severe fever, he knew something was going very wrong.

Along with the spider powers came a super fast metabolism, which allowed him to heal faster than almost anyone the Avengers had ever seen. One minute he'd be bleeding, the next he'd have nothing but a faint memory in the form of a pale scar. Peter knew Tony always felt conflicted by that--he was definitely grateful the kid could heal so fast, but it also meant that Peter only felt less of a need to be careful. The teen was constantly putting himself in life-threatening situations to save other people because "he could handle it and they can't".

But the longer the strange symptoms persisted, the more Peter wished that his healing factor would either solve the problem completely, or just stop fighting so hard if it wasn't going to accomplish anything anyway.

The truth was, Peter's body was slowly rejecting and attacking his foreign DNA. But, seeing how it was completely intertwined with his regular DNA, that meant that his own genetics were getting caught in the crossfire. His body cells were slowly deteriorating, even with his advanced healing doing everything it could to stop it.

He'd done some tests on it behind Tony's back while the man was on a mission with the Avengers, not wanting the billionaire to worry about the fact that Peter was taking his own blood and then running tests on it. And his theories had been confirmed.

That was four months ago.

"Is something wrong with your food, hun?"

The only other person Peter had told was Ned, because it was too much for him to handle keeping the secret all to himself and his best friend deserved to know. May didn't know he was Spider-Man, so dropping that bomb on her along with the whole "my body is killing itself" was not happening unless it was absolutely necessary. He couldn't tell Tony either. He would panic, would do drastic things to try and keep him alive. After all, Tony was a superhero--it was his job to save people. But the harsh reality was that Peter had already tried to come up with a solution, and it eventually boiled down to the fact that the technology simply didn't exist yet.

"Peter?"

He'd brought up the idea about genetic technology with Tony under the ruse that his friend's mom was suffering from a genetic disease and he wanted to help, hoping that maybe setting the genius on the task as well would get some better results. But the longer they worked, the more they realized that science hadn't quite caught up to the organic technologies of the body. The folding of proteins was still an enigma to professionals, the DNA code was complex and individualized for everyone, and there was only so far they could get without completely devoting their lives to the research and study it would take to better understand the complexities behind the human body.

"I'm sorry about your friend," Tony had said sincerely one day after hours of working together in the lab. "But this project is going to take years more of research and experimentation. I'll send what we've got to some institutions with professionals in the area, see what they can do with it." Peter had smiled sadly and nodded, thanking Mr. Stark for being willing to try, but inside his heart had been sinking. There went his last hope of patching himself back together, unless the scientists Tony sent their research to somehow pulled off a miracle breakthrough within the next few months.

"Peter? Are you alright? I thought you loved Thai," May said, leaning across the table with a worried look on her face.

Peter snapped out of his thoughts, eyes widening as he realized he'd completely zoned out. "What?"