Outnumbered

Peter can feel the drop before Karen alerts him. It starts as a slight headache, a fuzziness at the edges of his vision, before it spreads through his body and makes him feel like he’s swimming in molasses. He’s swinging from building to building, trying to create a web blockade between 42nd and 7th, but as he shoots a new string of web out, it misses its intended target, leaves him tumbling headfirst and ass up until he finally gets haphazard spurts of his webbing to latch on to a fire escape.

He ends up suspended, swinging between two close buildings and asks Karen to find somewhere safe for him to sit and get himself back on track.

“You have a fall rate notification,” Karen reads to Peter, who can only huff because as great as technology is, it’s always delayed. He needed that alarm ten minutes ago to beat this. “You are currently at 65 mg/dL and dropping at 3 mg/dL per minute.” Low, but not too low. It’s the drop, he knows, that’s really doing him in. He was 180 and rising when they started the battle.

His basal, which has probably just started to pause, coupled with his intense exercise, is making him go low.

“Fuck,” Peter grumbles, straining his muscles and webshooters to get him up to the nearest roof, which Karen has identified as a suitable spot. He launches himself with all of the energy he can muster, rolls to a stop belly-up atop a nearby building, and lies there, taking an inventory of his body as his head pounds.

“Urgent low soon, 55 mg/dL in 20 minutes,” Karen chimes.

“Pete, FRIDAY’s sending me Dex alarms. You okay?” Tony’s asking through the comms. He’s masking his panic, doesn’t want Peter to know how concerned he truly is, but Peter can hear him panting and receiving hits to his suit, and the sounds are causing his senses to overload.

“I-I’m dropping,” Peter says, his arms suddenly heavy as he tries to get his fingers working so that he can pull his pump through the neck hole of his suit. He knows he needs a glucose tab and to make sure his pump has caught up with Dexcom, but he can’t seem to control his muscles. He gets a grip on it only for it to slip back into the pocket inside the chest of his suit. He tries again but his muscles burn and his hands begin to shake. His arms drop in defeat and he whines. “Can’t get to it. Too shaky. I’m…I’m not okay, Tony.”

“Shit, I can’t get to you, kid,” Tony says. “FRIDAY-

“I’ve already alerted members of the team,” FRIDAY chimes. “Help will be with you shortly, Peter.”

“Dex says you’re 60 with double down arrows. Glucose tabs, kiddo. Now!”

“Tryin’ but I’m…this one’s bad, Tony.” Peter tries to grab the few stashed in a compartment in his suit but his fingers just won’t cooperate. He sniffles back tears, doesn’t want to cry on the comms because he knows everyone is listening.

“I know. Hang in there, Peter. I’m gonna try and get to you, okay?”

“Head hurts.”

“Gotta stay awake for me. FRIDAY, stop insulin on Peter’s pump.”

“Unable to connect to Peter’s pump,” FRIDAY relays.

“Shit.”

X

“Hey, kid,” he hears Steve say sometime later, and while it feels like hours, he knows it’s probably only been a few minutes. He’s being lifted into a sitting position against a wall and there’s a straw at his lips. He tries to hold it himself, but Peter’s hand starts shaking so wildly that he can’t keep the straw in his mouth, so Steve holds it while Peter sips and tries to focus on blocking out how overwhelming all of the sounds of the city at war and feelings in his body are.

“M-my pump,” Peter says when he’s finished the juice box, shaking fingers going for the device beneath his suit. “Gotta…see if my pump stopped…” He watches Steve pry his fingers away from the collar of his suit, feels him stretch the material to grab it from its hidden pocket in his chest plate and pull it up and out, tubing and all.

“How do I do this?” Steve asks, but Peter’s eyes are already closed. “Hey.” He feels a hand on his shoulder, opens his eyes to see Steve blurring in front of him, trying to get his attention. Peter’s head is swimming, still feels himself dropping despite the juice. He thinks about a glucose tab, but he’s not sure he can get his mouth to chew, feels his lips tingling and his ears ringing. He takes in a shaky breath and closes his eyes again. “You’ve gotta tell me how to do this so I can help you.” Steve sounds the most unsure he’s ever been in his life. “I’m not really that great with technology.”

“He needs another juice box,” Tony says through the comms, and Steve puts the pump in Peter’s lap before pulling another box from his satchel. He pops the straw in and hands it to Peter, but the kid’s hand is shaking even worse now. Scratch that, his whole body is, and Steve is just about ready to start shaking himself. “I’m watching him plummet on my screen. He’s 48 with double down arrows. Gotta make sure that basal is paused, Cap, or he’s gonna be comatose. Pete, you still with us?”

“Mmhm,” Peter mumbles, fighting to stay conscious. “Don’ f-feel g-good.” His words slur and his breathing is heavy, uneven.

Steve runs an anxious hand through his hair while he looks at Peter’s pump. “Tony, I have no idea how to work this thing. It’s complicated even though there’s only one button!”

“Do you see a diamond in the left-hand corner?”

“No. There’s just a box?”

“Does it say insulin on board, on the bottom?”

“Yeah, five units.”

“Shit.” Tony’s thrusters sound in the background of his comm before something heavy hits his armor. “Click the options button on the screen and then click stop insulin. Did you give him the second juice box?”

“I don’t see an options button. And no, not yet, I can’t do both at once! I clicked and held the button on the top. It’s buzzing and beeping at me. It says quick bolus?”

“No!” Peter cries out in a weak panic, his eyelids drooping. “You tryna…kill me?!”

“Cancel, Steve! Hit cancel!” Tony yells. “Jesus Christ!”

“Don’t yell at me! I couldn’t get past the lock screen to do the options thing!”

“Stop…yelling,” Peter mumbles, squeezing his eyes closed. “Hurts. Everything hurts.”

“Click the numbers in order,” Tony directs. “It’ll unlock the screen.”

“Tony, I’m scared I’m going to fuck this up!”

“You can do this, Steve,” Tony assures him. “Options and stop insulin. Two steps.”

“I can’t do this, Tony. What if I give him insulin by accident? I’m going to give him the second juice box, see if that helps.”

Peter’s Dexcom app lets out four shrill beeps and Tony gets an alert on his screen that reads LOW. It means Peter’s below 40.

“Goddamnit, can someone get here and help me get this robot off my ass so I can get to Peter? Clint? Someone?!”

“On it!” Natasha calls through the comms.

By the time Peter’s finished with his second juice box, Tony is exiting his suit on the rooftop. He kneels down, clad in jeans and a t-shirt, and reaches for Peter’s pump. “Stopping insulin, okay kiddo?” A moment later, there’s a glucose tab at his lips. “Chew.”

“Nauseous,” he groans between chews.

“You’re still dropping. Hang in there,” Tony says, getting his suit back on and pulling Peter into his arms. “I’m gonna get you home, okay?”

The world goes black before Peter can answer.

X

“Looks like your pump lost Bluetooth signal with Dexcom,” Bruce says in MedBay, clicking through the settings. “That’s why it didn’t pause your insulin when you dropped. Did you make any adjustments to you suit recently? Maybe something interfered with the signal?”

“Y-yeah,” Peter says, thinking about his time in the lab with Ned. “But that doesn’t explain why I had more than five units on board. I only needed like two units for the potatoes. I usually pre-bolus, but I forgot, so I did it after we ate.”

“Says here you put in 184 carbs and it calculated nearly 15 units for an extended bolus,” Bruce says, raising an eyebrow.

That’s when it hits him.

Peter put 184 carbs into his pump instead of his 184 blood sugar.

He’s nearly just put himself into a coma because he wasn’t paying enough attention.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony whispers, rubbing his eyes. “184 carbs? 15 units? For potatoes?” For a moment, Peter thinks things might be okay because Tony isn’t completely losing it like he usually does, not yet at least, and things were okay when he forgot to connect his pump a few weeks ago, but he realizes a second later when Tony’s hand curls into a tight fist at his side and sets his jaw that his anger is only just building.

Peter’s eyes widen. “T-tony, I-”

“Peter, this is…” Tony trails, unable to find the words. He rubs his face, licks his lips. “Fuck. If I hadn’t gotten to that rooftop in time…”

“It was an accident!” Peter defends. “I p-promise it was an accident!”

“15 units of insulin?!” The anger rolls out of Tony faster than he can hold it back.

Peter’s chin falls, tears pressing. He’s still feeling pretty crappy, knows that if Tony hadn’t paused his basal when he did, he might not be here right now.

He knows.

He knows he fucked up.

Like truly and completely fucked up.

This is not something that can happen again.

“You know how sensitive you are to exercise and heat!” Tony yells. “15 units of insulin?! I can’t even wrap my head around this right now.”

“The mission alarm went off when I was bolusing,” Peter finds himself whispering. “And I…I must’ve gotten distracted a-and…y-you wouldn’t have let me go if I wasn’t ready, s-so I guess I was rushing-”

“You’re fucking right I wouldn’t have let you go!” There’s fire in Tony’s eyes as he points a finger at Peter. “You put your entire team in jeopardy today because you never think things through! You’re so impulsive sometimes! It’s like your intelligence just goes out the window!” Tony yells.

“Tony,” Bruce cuts in, putting a hand up.

“No, he needs to hear this!” he argues, moving closer to Peter. “You cannot cut corners, Peter! Not when it comes to your health! You’re not invincible! You’re off all missions until we get this figured out!”

“Tony,” Bruce interrupts sternly. “Stop.”

Peter sobs quietly, wishes more than anything that May was here. He doesn’t think she’ll be any less angry, doesn’t know what to do to fix this, if he can fix this, but he feels so alone all of a sudden. “I’m s-sorry,” he sobs. “I’m so sorry!”

Tony closes his eyes and bites his bottom lip. “What happened tonight is a symptom of a larger problem. I can’t figure out if you’re serious about taking care of yourself or if you’re still so angry that it happened that you can’t see past it.”

And Peter wants to argue that he’s not angry, that he’s not an angry person, but that’s not right, because didn’t they just talk about anger in support group? Didn’t Peter admit to being angry? Didn’t he inadvertently take that out on MJ, and Ned, and everyone else over the last week?

He is angry, but it feels like he has to hide it. Like he can’t be honest because the truth might hurt everyone more than lying about it.

And now this, this awful mess he never intended to happen.

Because truth be told, he's been scared, so afraid that if he lets the anger he’s been hiding rise to the surface, along with all of the other emotions he’s not even sure how to label or name, it's going to rip him apart.

Fully and completely.

Rip everything with his family and his team apart, just like the lying has done.

He can’t bear to do that, not after they’ve all been so supportive.

And he’s not sure they even want to hear the truth.

This hasn’t been fair for them, either, and he hates that he’s done another thing to cause an emergency, cause conflict, cause everyone to come running to make sure he’s okay. May is on her way with Happy, as is Pepper, and he doesn’t want Morgan to see him like this.

They all want him to be strong, whatever that actually means, but the truth is that Peter feels anything but strong and capable lately. Not consistently strong and capable, anyway.

For a brief moment, he wishes Tony hadn’t gotten there in time, that he wouldn’t have to be awake for this. It’s not like him to go there, but then again, none of what’s happened in the last five months has made any sense.

The sharp pain of knowing just how immensely he’s fucked up weighs heavy in his chest.

"I will always support you, Peter,” Tony explains. “But I can't make you take care of yourself. I can't make you want it. I'm not saying it's easy, because I know that it's not, but not putting your health first is not acceptable. What happened today…” He shakes his head, paces the room.

Peter’s lip trembles. “I just wanted to do something good for the world!”

“You can’t save the world if you’re not here to do it, Peter!”

And that?

That’s all Tony can get out before May arrives with Happy in tow.

X