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Okay so, Peter got sick that one time at the tower and Tony decided from then on that he was going to personally see to everything that entered into Peter’s stomach. Which is impossible, really, since Peter doesn’t live at the tower and he isn’t going to listen to his mentor’s silly little rules when it comes to what foods he’s allowed to have.
Tony does have a bit more control over him when it comes to eating meals together, though, so when Peter meets the Rogue Avengers for the first time and they all have dinner together, it’s a little bit embarrassing, to say the least, to have Tony there to stop him from taking from any dishes that have even the slightest possibility of making him sick later on.
It’s so ridiculous, May doesn’t care at all whether Peter decides to make himself sick or not, it’s his grave. When they had initially realized there was a problem she had tried to work with him, of course, but that ship has long since sailed. Now Peter is left wondering when Tony would give it up.
Peter is, under no circumstances, allowed to have dairy at the tower. It’s supposedly for his own good, but it only causes him to feel like a child. Which he isn’t. Alright fine, he happens to be lactose intolerant, so what? He knows his limits. It isn’t as though Tony is the one getting sick, either, so it doesn’t really even affect him, yet he insists on sticking his nose into Peter’s dietary business.
Anyway, there they are, all gathered around the dinner table. Peter has been introduced to the recently pardoned Avengers as Tony’s personal intern, and while no one seems to really buy it, tensions are still quite high so no one argues against it. That might have been why Tony had invited him to meet the Avengers in the first place, as an effort to cease a bit of the awkwardness.
It seems to be working, too, everyone’s smiling and happy, engaging in enthusiastic conversation about Peter’s studies and his work with Tony. It’s going great until Tony has to go and be the party pooper.
“I brought ice cream cake!” Clint announces joyfully once they all finish dinner. “Laura made a couple today, the kids love it.”
Peter has to fight to keep himself from jumping up and down in his seat. Man, he loves ice cream. “Why didn’t you bring your family with you, Mr. Barton?” he asks curiously.
“Ah, well, despite what it looks like, this is a business dinner, is it not? These are usually pretty… bland. Gotta say, kiddo, you kind of lifted the mood.”
Peter flushes. “Oh, um, well. Maybe you can bring them next time.” If Clint exchanges a look with the other Avengers sans Tony, Peter doesn’t notice as he’s fairly occupied with drooling over the ice cream cake.
Nor does Tony as he shakes his head at his kid. “Absolutely not.”
“Mr. Stark, it literally doesn’t-”
“Don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter, because last time you were literally puking your guts out. No, you’re not going to have any ice cream cake.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Watch me.”
“Um, my body, my choice?”
“I swear to God, Peter Parker-”
“It’s really not very nice to swear upon Thor, Mr. Stark.”
“I’m sorry, but can I just ask what’s going on here?” Steve breaks in, confused. The other dinner occupants seem equally so.
“Peter here is forbidden to consume dairy, so that ice cream cake is an absolute no-no,” answers Tony.
“Which is so stup-”
“I do apologize for attempting to save your life, but you are allergic.”
“I am not! I’m just lactose intolerant, it isn’t even that big of a deal!”
“Keyword; intolerant.”
Clint picks the cake up again and slowly backs out of the room. “I’ll just, uh, take this one back home to the kids.”
“See what you’ve done?” Peter huffs. “Now no one is having cake and everyone is upset!”
“You’re the only one bringing out the exclamation points in this conversation, Underoos.”
Peter crosses his arms over his chest and glares down at the table. He knows that he’s acting like a petulant child, but he doesn’t really care just now.
“O-kay, well,” Wanda says after a moment. “That escalated quickly.”
“Is it really so-” Sam starts, but Tony cuts him off with a firm “yes.”
The atmosphere quickly becomes tense and awkward again, so things are back to normal, at least.
***
“You know I just worry about you, kid,” Tony says quietly.
“I know. That doesn’t mean that you have to embarrass me in front of everyone,” Peter responds, adjusting his mask as he prepares to leave and start on his patrol. It’s Friday night and he will be spending the weekend in the tower, but that doesn’t mean he has any plans to skip out on his usual routine.
“No offense, buddy, but you kind of did that one to yourself.”
“Seriously?” Peter asks incredulously, rolling his eyes though Tony can’t see through the mask to appreciate it.
“Yeah, seriously. Just- I’d rather not fight if that’s alright? I’m sorry, I don’t want to be that mean mentor that you’re pissed at all the time. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”
“Tony,” Peter sighs. “It’s really not that deep. I think you overreact about the whole thing big time, but I’m not actually mad. Even though it was super embarrassing.”
“Sorry,” Tony says again, though he doesn’t really seem all that apologetic. “Have a safe patrol.”
“Sure thing,” Peter responds before leaping out the window and swinging through the city.
It’s a decent enough patrol, no fatalities and no criminals escaping his webs, but still, sometimes attempting to protect the city from harm kind of sucks.
Peter’s a fifteen-year-old kid from Queens, he’s no stranger to violence, but… it still isn’t pretty to witness it first hand. At least he himself doesn’t get stabbed (this time), but he hates that someone else is under his watch and he isn’t quick enough to prevent it.
After webbing up the attacker and escorting the victim to the nearest hospital for treatment, Peter decides to call it a night. It’s one of those long nights where one really just needs the comfort of their own bed. And ice cream.
Clint had taken the ice cream cake home with him to avoid further conflict, but Peter is certain that Tony has some Ben and Jerry’s stashed in the freezer in the tower…
He slides back through the window and into his bedroom, throwing his mask off and onto the bed and changing into his pajamas before tip-toeing out of his room and to the kitchen. For most people, sneaking ice cream has something to do with calories, but for Peter, it’s lactose, his greatest enemy. The Vulture? Whatever, that dude is in prison.
Peter creeps over towards the freezer, mind filled with nothing but his goal, which is probably why he doesn’t notice Black Widow’s presence until he opens the freezer and she speaks, startling him enough to jump up to the ceiling... and stick.
He looks upside down at the woman sitting at the counter, chest quickly filling with dread. It definitely isn’t going to be easy to explain his way out of this situation.
Natasha simply raises her eyebrows, arms crossed against her chest. “So, Spider-Man is lactose intolerant. Interesting.”
Peter takes a few steadying breaths before slowly lowering himself down from the ceiling. “This-this isn’t what it looks like...”
“What, the fact that Tony Stark’s personal intern whom he seems very familial with and who has a bedroom at the Avengers tower just stuck himself to the ceiling like a spider, or that he’s sneaking dairy products in the middle of the night?”
“It’s hardly sneaking,” Peter defends weakly, ignoring the first bit. Right now his dairy defense is more important than his secret identity reveal. She probably had figured it out already, anyway.
“Considering it’s such a poor attempt at it, yes, it is hardly sneaking,” Natasha says. “But you were still attempting to sneak, therefore it qualifies.”
Peter groans, pushing the now beeping freezer drawer closed with his foot to shut it up. “Okay, yeah, I was sneaking but so what? It’s just ice cream.”
“Something you are allergic to, are you not?”
“No, I’m not,” Peter says, brightening as he’s being truthful for once. “Lactose intolerance is when your body can't break down or digest lactose. Lactose is a sugar found in milk and milk products. Lactose intolerance happens when your small intestine does not make enough of a digestive enzyme called lactase. It is not the same as a milk or dairy allergy. Food allergies are caused by your immune system reacting to a certain type of food. This causes symptoms such as a rash, wheezing and itching.”
“God, kid, did you swallow an encyclopedia?”
Peter frowns. “Do you mean Wikipedia?”
“I- yeah, whatever. Anyway, what I got from all that is your body is still unable to digest it properly, so that makes it bad for you.”
“There’s like a 50/50 chance I’ll get sick, and even then it’s not as though it’s life-threatening. That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
“Tony wouldn’t like it,” Natasha contemplates.
“Tony isn’t here,” Peter points out.
Natasha sighs, uncrossing her arms and going over to the freezer. “Fine, but only one pint for you,” she says, handing a carton to him. One pint is far more than Peter had planned on having, but he certainly isn’t going to reject it.
She grabs another pint for herself and a couple of spoons from the drawer before sitting down at the counter, gesturing for Peter to take a seat beside her. He pulls out the stool and plops down onto it, carefully peeling back the wrapping on his ice cream carton. It’s Tony’s Ben and Jerry’s flavor, Peter’s favorite. He glances over at Natasha and sees that she has Strawberry Slinging Spiderman. Peter isn’t a fan of strawberries but they didn’t ask him for permission before marketing an ice cream flavor for him. He could probably sue for copyright or something.
He gets the lid off and dips the spoon Natasha passes him into the concoction. It tastes heavenly on his tongue, and right now he couldn’t care less about the fact that it’s more of a 40/60 than 50/50 chance that he would soon be swearing off dairy for the rest of his life yet again.
“So,” Black Widow says, licking her spoon in a way that could have been viewed as extremely provocative to half the boys in his high school, “are we going to talk about this whole Spider-Man thing?”
***
It’s 2 a.m. by the time Natasha and Peter part ways for the night, and that’s more because of Peter feeling sick than it getting late.
He doesn’t mention that to her though, as he bids her goodnight and slips away to his room. He tries to just fall asleep and let the queasiness pass, but he hardly closes his eyes before he’s jumping up to go the restroom, where he spends half an hour or so promising himself that he would never, ever, eat an entire pint of ice cream in a single sitting ever again before returning to his room, where he finds Tony sitting on the edge of his bed scrolling through his phone.
“Uh, Mr. Stark, what are you doing up so late?” Peter asks wearily, moving his hands away from his stomach in an effort to hide his discomfort.
“I could ask you the same,” Tony says, not looking up from his phone. “It’s 3 a.m. and FRIDAY informed me that you got back from patrol a couple of hours ago.”
“Ah, well, you know how it is,” Peter says, slowly moving towards his bed and lying down on it. Normally he would flop but just the idea of such wild movements right now made him feel a little bit nauseous. “Night owl and all that.”
“Mhmm,” Tony hums, knowing that Peter usually falls asleep as soon as he changes out of his spider suit. “Would you like a snack before you nod off? Maybe some pizza, an enchilada, or I dunno, ice cream?”
“Mr. Stark,” Peter groans, turning his face into the pillow. “Does FRIDAY report my every move to you?”
“Only when it may be considered hazardous to your health,” he answers. “But she didn’t say anything to me this time. It’s just that there’s two empty cartons of Ben and Jerry’s in the trashcan and oh, you’ve been hanging out in the bathroom for the last half hour.”
“In my defense; I only had one of those cartons. Ms. Romanoff had the other one.”
Tony puts his phone down now, glaring at his protege. “You mean to tell me that she encouraged and assisted in this self-destructive behavior?”
“No, no,” Peter says, lifting his head, “not exactly. I mean, she tried to stop me. But then I explained to her that it wasn’t a big deal and she… yeah.”
Tony lets out an angry-sounding huff of air, though there’s a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “So you tricked her? You tricked Black Widow?”
“It wasn’t a trick, exactly, more like a, uh…”
“A trick.”
“It was just the truth.”
“A sugar-coated version of it, sure.”
“Mmm, sugar-coated like ice cream,” Peter hums, causing Tony to put his head in his hands and let out a weird and slightly muffled noise.
“It was your Ben and Jerry’s flavor if that makes you feel any better,” Peter says, giving his best puppy dog eyes.
“How is my direct involvement in your self-poisoning supposed to make me feel better?”
“I- I don’t know. It was really good, though.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure that it’s great now,” Tony mutters, taking a bottle of pills out of his pocket and shaking a couple out. Peter groans again.
“Mr. Stark, those don’t even do anything and they taste really bad.”
“You’re not supposed to taste the pills, you’re supposed to swallow them,” Tony says, rolling his eyes.
“I can’t help it, it takes me a minute to get one down and they already tasted bad before I had like, super tasting and all that. You know, I never even took a pill at all until I was twelve and super feverish because they’re so hard for me to swallow.”
“You’re a big kid now, I’m sure you can take it,” Tony says, picking a glass of water up off the nightstand. “If not, I suppose you should have thought about that before ingesting poison, again.”
“I just needed some ice cream. I had a hard night.”
“Oh, don’t give me that sob story again,” Tony rolls his eyes, handing him the pills that hardly help at all but he still insists on forcing down Peter’s throat every time he has a little tummy ache, “just because everyone says Ben and Jerry’s makes you feel better doesn’t mean that it’s actually factual.”
“But, Mr. Stark, I do feel better,” Peter argues, wincing as he pushes himself up to take the water and pills. He has a feeling that it has a bit more to do with talking to Natasha for a while rather than the ice cream, but he’s sure that the heavenly chilled hazelnut still played a major role in it all.
Tony gives him a look as Peter grimaces, swallowing the pills. “Yeah, kid, you look like you’re doing great. You only spent half an hour or so in the bathroom, which is only slightly longer than it took you to allow the poison into your system, I’m sure.”
“Mental health is valid, sir,” Peter mutters, laying back down on his back in an effort to keep his stomach calm.
“Yeah, it is,” Tony sighs, throwing his legs up on the bed and laying an arm around Peter’s shoulder. “Like, my mental health kind of takes a dive every time you knowingly partake in actions that will do you harm.”
“It’s fine, Tony,” Peter mumbles, moving his head to rest on Tony’s chest while keeping the rest of his body free of movement. “Honestly.”
“Sure,” Tony says placatingly. “Are you okay, bud? Did you really have a rough night?”
“Yeah, sort of,” Peter murmurs, snuggling closer to his mentor. “But it’s alright now.”
Tony hums, carding his fingers through his curls. “Just try to get some sleep.”
Peter shuts his eyes for a few minutes and almost allows his breathing to even out before jumping back up to return to the bathroom.
***
“You seriously gave him an entire pint of ice cream? He’s allergic!”
Natasha shrugs in response to Tony’s ranting. “Not technically. Lactose intolerance happens when your small intestine does not make enough of a digestive enzyme called lactase. It is not the same as a milk or dairy allergy. Food allergies are caused by-”
“Jesus, did you seriously feed her all that crap?” Tony directs his question at Peter.
“It’s not crap, it’s the truth!”
“It still makes you extremely sick, as demonstrated last night! I can’t believe that you actually fell for this, Natasha.”
“There’s nothing to fall for, I literally just explained the definition of lactose intolerance to her,” Peter reasons.
Natasha nods, turning back to her book.
“Oh my God,” Tony says. “You actually brainwashed the Black Widow, I can’t with you.”
“Mr. Stark, did you seriously just reference Gen Z slang or am I hallucinating from the lactose overdose?”
“It’s only because I spend far too much time with a hopeless case from the generation.”
Peter sticks out his lower lip. “You think that I’m a hopeless case?”
Tony hesitates before throwing an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “No, no, you’re not a hopeless case. I think with a little more mentoring, you could be a real asset to the team.”
“Asshat?” Scott calls from the other room. “Peter’s a sweet kid, I don’t think that he’s an asshat.”
“I-I’m done, I’m officially done,” Tony says, though he keeps his arm around Peter.
Peter grins. He’s made Tony Stark and Black Widow softies. This moment would truly be perfect with just a touch of ice cream. If only Tony hadn’t thrown out the remainder of the Stark Raving Hazelnuts…
No matter, Peter can always just swing by the store to get his fix.