Think you know where this is going? Place your bets now :P
"I've got a school physical today," Peter complained over breakfast at the Avengers tower. He'd stayed overnight to help Tony finish a project, and he was dead tired but it was worth it if he got to have breakfast with the Avengers.
"Boo-hoo, Mr Superstrength. I'm sure that'll be so hard for you."
"You laugh, Sam, but you've never had to sit through the Captain America Fitness Challenge videos."
"Oh no," Steve grimaced.
"Oh?" Sam sat up. Smirking.
Peter smirked right back. "Look it up."
"I definitely will. Are you going to finish your tea?"
"Oh, right. Is this peppermint tea? I haven't had this stuff for ages." Peter downed the rest of the mug. Sam and Bucky watched with matching smirks. "Okay, bye guys, have a good day!"
The pair watched him go, then went to do the dishes. Tony was oblivious, having not finished his third coffee yet, and Steve was busy praying his friends would forget about those cursed videos to notice the troublemaking grins or how Bucky subtly cleared 'what do spiders hate?' from his search history. They'd snuck peppermint, eucalyptus and cinnamon into the packed lunch Steve had made for Peter as well - the perfect revenge prank for the way he'd beaten them at the airport.
The rest of the morning was mostly uneventful. Sam and Bucky found the Cap fitness video - and the rest of the PSAs - but were too busy anticipating the kid's reaction to their surprises tonight to do anything about that just yet.
It was just after lunch that Tony got a call from May Parker. He left to answer in private, then returned, grim-faced, to grab a jacket before heading for the door. "Peter's in the hospital," he said over his shoulder.
Sam and Bucky stared at each other guiltily. They hadn't meant for the prank to cause harm - only some mild irritation for the spider-kid.
Tony didn't return for two hours. Every minute that passed was like a weight, dragging down the hearts of the pranksters. What had they done? How bad was it?
How were they going to tell New York that they'd accidentally killed the city's favourite hero over a petty grudge?
They were ruined. The Falcon and White Wolf were done. Stark was going to kill them both.
How could they live with themselves, knowing they'd killed an innocent child?
Bucky took a shaky breath. Sam swallowed, hard.
Finally, the elevator doors opened again to reveal Tony and a... perfectly fine looking Peter?
"Is everything okay?" Steve asked them, furrowed brow relaxing at the sight of Peter. Even Sam and Bucky had to admit they were glad to see the kid was alright.
"Yeah," Tony scoffed, pouring himself a strong coffee. "Peter can tell the story."
The kid's lips twitched up, and he took a seat. "I told you I had a physical, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Well as part of that they had to weigh us. Turns out one of my freakish spider characteristics is that I'm weirdly light, something to do with the density of my bones, and all the teachers started freaking out. Someone googled it and they ended up phoning an ambulance seeing as I'm below the minimum for underweight on the BMI. All the way there I was trying to convince them it was a mistake with the scales and I felt fine, but nobody was listening to me and they made me eat my sandwich and a bunch of cereal bars. At the hospital they weighed me again then put in a super-sugary IV, even though I'm clearly healthy, and kept asking when I last ate and other stuff."
"That's when they phoned May," Tony joined in. "She figured out what was going on a lot faster than I would have done, so she called me to go bail him out."
"But before he got there, they decided I was stable enough to put through a whole doctor's assessment, seeing as I don't have any recent official records for them to compare. And, um, obviously I've seen some stuff, so when it got to the bit where you play word association and look at weird ink pictures, I don't think I answered them all right, so I might have been diagnosed with an undetermined level of trauma as well. Then Mr Stark showed up, before they could take a blood test, thankfully, and convinced them all that I was fine and the equipment was malfunctioning. And now here I am."
"So you were only in hospital because of a misunderstanding?" Sam asked. "Not because you were ill at all?"
"Yeah. Why?" He squinted suspiciously at them, then made an 'oh' of realisation. "You guys tried to poison me."
"They did what?" Tony yelled whilst both men spluttered useless denials.
"Relax, Mr Stark, it was probably just a prank. I knew my sandwich tasted funny - you put eucalyptus in it, right?"
"Yeah," Bucky admitted, pretending he wasn't intimidated by Stark's glare. "Did it not work? We thought spiders hated mint and stuff."
Peter laughed. "Did you look up why?" They both shook their heads uneasily. "Go on, then." He folded his arms.
Sam pulled out his phone and searched it up. "Spiders have scent-sensitive hairs on their legs. Strong natural oils such as mint or eucalyptus are too strong and cause pain to the spider, meaning they tend to avoid it."
"So you essentially tried to induce a sensory overload," Steve realised disapprovingly.
"Why didn't it work?" Bucky asked.
Peter shrugged. "Spiders don't like it because it's too strong for their enhanced senses. But all my senses are enhanced, so I'm used to strong tastes or smells hurting a bit sometimes."
"Oh." Sam processed this. Stark's death glare intensified.
"I just can't believe you guys thought that would actually work," Peter snorted. "What were you expecting, me to break out in hives or just start crying? But seriously, you've seen me eat cinnamon buns before, and mint choc chip is literally my favourite ice cream! Besides, Ned and I tested all these things ages ago, he was super disappointed when I didn't react to the bug spray." Peter laughed, and grabbed his bag. Tony looked like he really wanted to say something about that last point, but let Peter follow Happy out to the car and go home to his aunt.
The moment Peter was out of earshot, Tony turned on Sam and Bucky with fury. "Even if he did have that kind of spider mutation, he might have had a really bad allergic reaction or something! In what world was that going to end well? What were you going to do if you actually killed him, huh?"
They shuffled their feet and mumbled apologies. Fighting with Stark about the kid's safety was like bashing your head off a brick wall - pointless and painful. He eyed them, then seemingly satisfied with their grovelling, stalked off to his lab.
It was just Steve, Sam and Bucky in the room.
"I'm really disappointed with you guys," Steve began, but Bucky interrupted with a glint in his eyes.
"Oh no, Steve, you don't get to take that tone with us. We have some PSAs to talk about."
The next time Peter was at the tower, Sam sought him out.
"Look, man, I'm really sorry about what Buck and I did. It was stupid and could have ended really badly."
"Oh, it's no problem. I'm fine, right?"
"Yeah... about that... you mentioned being diagnosed with trauma? Have you been seeing anybody about that?"
"What, like a therapist? MJ says I should, but... I can't tell anyone I'm Spider-Man, and they can't help if they don't know the full story, right? I'm managing fine."
"Well... I'm actually a licensed PTSD counsellor. So if you ever want to talk, come find me. Got it?"
Peter stared at him. He swallowed. "Yeah. Yeah, I might just do that. Thank you, Sam."
"It no problem, bud. Anytime."