Mono-man: A Spiderson Sickfic

I'm A Big Boy Now

Tony's Pov:

"That's it Peter, I know you can do this, come to Daddy!" I cooed as I knelt down in front of my son's bed, my arms outstretched for him.

"Dad, you've seen me walk before." Peter croaked out, rolling his eyes at me. Teenagers. He then slowly stood up all by himself and took the few steps to get to me, holding onto my shoulders by the end and kneeling down himself.

"Aww, I'm so proud of you." I cooed again, pulling my son into my lap and kissing him repeatedly on the head.

"Daaaad!" Peter whined, he wasn't complaining all those years ago when we did this for the first time.

"What? Did you want me to get the video camera?" I asked him, once upon a time video cameras were used daily in the family dynamic to document the lives of a household for the purposes of memories to be put onto a video tape for later viewing. This would have been one of those moments, a milestone to be remembered by all. I have a couple in storage from when Peter was a baby, I filmed the first time he climbed the walls, his first time eating spaghetti, so many more happy memories. I kind of wished we still used video cameras, despite all the high level technology I own.

"No, I wanna go back to bed." Peter said, crawling back over and pulling himself onto his mattress, all without my assistance.

"Okay, that's enough walking for one day. But you're making progress. Pretty soon you'll be saving the world." I said feeling optimistic for him, yesterday he felt a bit more chipper about walking but now he was all tired out.

"I don't know about that yet, Dad." Peter said sadly before curling up into a ball under his blankie. He squirmed for a second and whimpered like a sad little puppy.

"C-Could you pass me the h-heating pad, please?" He said looking up at me with his sick little puppy dog eyes.

"Of course Peter, your stomach still hurts?" I asked as I picked it up from the chair, Peter nodded slowly before I placed it on his stomach and turning it on. He curled in on it tighter.

"Aww, I'm sorry Underoos." I said softly as I sat on the edge of the bed, I ran my hand over his back as he tried to relax. Peter took some deep breaths as he waited for the pain to subside.

"We may have over did it with the walking, I want you to regain some strength but I don't want you pushing yourself." I told him, Bruce had told me the complications of mononucleosis. One of which being a ruptured spleen, that's why I was paying close attention whenever Peter mentioned abdominal pain, like he was experiencing right now. I doubted that his spleen was currently rupturing, the pain seemed no worse than normal from where I'm watching, but I still worried for him. Of course you worry when your child gets sick, but Peter was very precious to me, to Pepper and everyone who knew him. If anything were to happen to him, I'd never be able to forgive myself.

"Is the heating pad helping?" I asked him, he nodded.

"Yeah." Peter croaked out weakly, his throat still sounded pretty bad. Poor thing, I thought that his symptoms were improving. I sighed and continued to rub his back, that seemed to soothe him.

"Do you want me to give you some peace? You could use a nap." I suggested, I didn't want to over stay my welcome. I remember being a teen myself, I hated when my parents invaded my space for too long, so I decided to respect when Peter wanted time to himself. But to my surprise Peter slowly shook his head.

"C-Can we snuggle for a while?" Peter asked shyly as he grabbed my wrist. It had been a while since I heard him say that.

"Sure, we can do that." I said as I got comfortable next to him, he curled up into my side and buried his face into my chest. I stroked his fluffy brown hair as he melted into my embrace.