are you hungry?
For the first few days, Peter actually thinks someone is gonna rescue them.
Mr. Stark, in his red-and-gold titanium suit, flying in and bursting through the ceiling, cracking the concrete to smithereens. War Machine and his clanky suit, massive repulsors extending from his back to blast the door to pieces. Black Widow raising her wrist and electrocuting Charlie and his crew one by one. Hawkeye drawing his bowstring back with one eye closed. Falcon’s wing extending from his back. Captain America throwing his shield with one hand, bouncing it off of Charlie’s bearded head, and catching it as the man fell.
Someone will break the cell door open. Someone will draw a blanket over Peter’s shoulders. Someone will bandage up his wounds. Someone will hold him and press a warm kiss to his forehead and say, You were brave, Peter. You were really, really brave.
And he’s trying.
He’s really trying to be brave.
But it’s getting harder each day to look this little girl in the eyes and tell her that everything’s gonna be okay. Because as every day passes, rescue gets less and less likely.
And honestly, Peter’s starting to wonder if anyone even noticed he’s gone.
Ned will notice, for sure. But maybe he’ll lose interest after a while. Maybe he’ll stop asking why. MJ, too. They’ll probably just befriend each other and forget about him. His teachers might think he moved away. Mr. Delmar will think he abandoned his job—Peter’s probably not getting that back. The Avengers don’t even know him, so he doubts they know he’s missing. Pepper might notice, but she’s always so busy. Happy, maybe. May will look for him, but she might be dead. Charlie says she is, and he doesn't really lie, so. She's probably... Probably...
The food slot opens now, and two Happy Meals are pushed through. The slot shuts; it doesn’t open from the inside. Peter grabs both meals and limps over to Cassie, passing one to her. She's a good kid.
Did any of them even know where to look? Peter doesn’t even know where he is. He could be in Antarctica for all he knows. There’s no windows in this place—not even in the hallway or in the room with the Chair. He’s never seen a sliver of sunlight through the closing door. The mud on Mason’s boots as he kicks is the only sign of outside.
The two of them eat quickly—so fast that Peter doesn’t even remember the actual action of putting the food in his mouth. Cassie says she’s still hungry after, so both of them drink water from the sink until water sloshes in their bellies.
He and Aunt May have struggled before, surely—but even after Peter’s Spider-metabolism kicked in, he was never, ever hungry.
This is a feeling that’s foreign to him, entirely. It’s not easy to get used to. Some days, the hunger is the worst part.
When she’s hungry, Cassie just cries and cries, but it’s not a pain, not really—it’s just a feeling, that’s what Peter has to keep telling himself. It’s a feeling, it’s just a feeling, and it won’t last.
But then the next day comes—no rescue. And the next day, and the next day, and the hunger is ever-present, foggy in his head, turning his thoughts mushy and gross. All he thinks about is food. Hospitals. pain medication. He prays for the day he’ll see the Medbay again, see the inside of the Avengers compound again, see his apartment again—sit at the kitchen table with May and just not have to worry anymore.
Peter misses May’s cooking—isn’t that funny? Her terrible, burnt cooking. When he was younger he used to scrape it under the table when she wasn’t looking. He’d eat it all now, he’d clean out the whole fridge if he could.
When I get back, Peter thinks, a half-prayer in his mind, we’re gonna go to that Thai place, May, okay? And I’m gonna eat whatever I want.
Is May eating Thai now? Without him? Maybe she is. Maybe she's holding a funeral for him with an empty casket. Maybe she's buried somewhere—next to Uncle Ben, Peter hopes. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Does she miss him?
Just thinking about Thai food makes his stomach cramp. Pad thai and fried rice and spicy curry and thick noodles… God, he’s hungry.
It’s the kind of hunger you feel in your chest and in your throat, like a physical thing, like a gnarled hand squeezing, like an actual physical emptiness. It spreads wide in him, grows, expands like a disease in him, like an infection until it’s all he can think about. Peter thinks about how much skin he can gnaw off the edges of his fingers, and it’s so bad he even thought about eating his hair, and only old stories from May stop him, because he doesn’t want to get sick.
Peter thinks sick things, really sick things, like eating the ends of his hair. He thinks about eating his skin, his fingernails, too, fucking scabs, and the thoughts only worsen from there. He stares down at his scabbed-up leg and thinks about it, really thinks about it—and it’s such a disgusting thought that he spends the whole rest of the day just hating himself for it.
And then one day they’re just sitting there, their breakfast long gone, and Cassie pick crumbs out of the box with her tiny fingers and then sticking her face in the box to lick it clean. She pulls out the wrapper next, and as Peter is sucking on a piece of fry-salted cardboard, Cassie is gnawing on the wrapper of her long-eaten burger. She’s licking it and then she’s just chewing on the edge of it, chewing and chewing and then when she pulls her mouth away from the wrapper the edge of it is gone.
She looks down at it—she’s almost as surprised as he is. “It’s okay,” Peter says quickly, because the little girl looks like she’s about to cry. He's really not used to kids. He doesn't have any siblings, and he's not big on babysitting, although he has been a camp counselor once or twice. He gets along with Ned's sister, though, and she's about Cassie's age. He says it again, "You're okay, you're okay," fast, like he's promising her, and eventually she sniffles and nods and scoots under the bed.
(Because they can’t afford another one of Cassie’s tantrums. They really can’t. Yesterday, Charlie heard Cassie crying, he barged in and smacked her so hard that her lip split wide open.)
He tries to think about the science—but honestly he doesn’t know if it’ll make him sick. So after the first day, they wait and see if she’ll throw it up.
She doesn’t.
So then the next day, Peter eats some, too.
And the next day, more, and more until they find themselves eating both the box and the wrapper in pieces, saving them for when the hunger’s truly bad. They know that there’s a certain amount they can eat now before they’ll get a stomachache.
They try only to do it when they have nothing else—but they’ll always eat a little of it, of that yellow papery wrapper—of the shiny red cardboard. It starts to look like food to him—that oil-spotted cardboard.
He knows it’s not good. He’s not stupid. He knows it’s not good.
But they’re just so fucking hungry.
So when Cassie asks for a snack, Peter gives her one—a little torn-off piece of cardboard, and she chews it up slow and swallows. He takes one for himself, too, and he relishes in it.
When he gets out of here and they ask what they did to survive, Peter won’t say a word about the cardboard or the wrappers or the scabs on his leg. It's too embarrassing to say aloud. He'll do as he always does, and smile. And maybe Tony will say, God, kid, you scared the shit out of me, and ruffle his hand through Peter's hair, messing it all up. But you were brave, kid. Really. You were so brave.
Peter wants it so badly it hurts.
He’s gonna get out of here.
He has to get out of here.
When Peter finally does make it out, he knows Tony will be able to fix his leg—Dr. Cho, or a nurse, or whoever else is there upstate. This won’t last forever. She’ll fix up his scars and feed him till his belly bursts and half-smile at him and say, I need a vacation. They'll fix up Cassie, too, surely, free of charge. Fix that broken hand. Maybe Ned and MJ will come visit. Maybe May will be there, too, kissing his hairline and hugging him tightly, wearing one of Uncle Ben's old shirts.
One day, the Avengers will break down that door.
One day, they’ll step out of this bunker.
One day, they’ll eat some real food—enough to fill their stomachs to the brim.
One day, Peter thinks, begging the universe, one day, right?
One day, he’ll see Aunt May again. His friends. Mr. Stark. Ned and MJ and Betty and Flash and even Mr. Harrington. He’ll visit Uncle Ben’s grave again. He’ll go to class. He’ll write his college applications. MIT, maybe, like Mr. Stark, although he doesn’t want to be too far from Aunt May.
One day, he’ll get seven-year-old Cassie back to her parents and he’ll shake their hands.
They will thank him, and they will hug him, and Cassie will cry like she always does.
And Peter will say to them, She was brave.
She was really, really brave.