Chapter 6
2 MONTHS AFTER BEN'S DEATH
May tries not to think about how much she suddenly doesn’t know about her nephews life. He had always talked to Ben more. Peter talks to her more now than he did in the immediate weeks following the shooting. He had been silent for days afterwards. It had been two months now, and he was talking more. He still wasn’t rambling like he used to be, but he would tell her about his day at school.
Peter had started sneaking out sometime in his silent stretch. Either that or he’d been much better about it before. Either way she heard the window open at one in the morning and then he’d fumble around in his room for a few minutes before going to sleep. He worried her.
May was fairly certain he wasn’t doing drugs. She didn’t dare search his room when he wasn’t there because she didn’t want to cross a privacy line when he was at a weird age and dealing with such extreme grief. She did however fiddle with a lot of things and move a lot of books when she would go in there with him. He never seemed to notice, so she figured if there were drugs they weren’t hiding close to his bed.
She also knew that after his father and his grandfather he was likely predisposed to addiction, and she would have been noticing symptoms. This scared her a little bit because the trauma of watching a- the trauma Peter had been through had caused a large variety of behavioral changes, but none of them quite made him seem high so she tried not to worry about it.
None of these assurances made her any more comfortable with the fact that Peter was hiding things from her.
The weird behavior compounded when Ned texted her halfway through a Wednesday saying that Peter had been buried in a notebook all day.
Peter had started keeping some of his notebooks secret from her soon after Ben died. May assumed this was simply his trying to write out his feelings and not wanting her to know about it. Ned told her he’d seen some of it and it looked sciency. This confused but didn’t concern May. She was momentarily worried that Peter was making drugs, but she pushed that thought away when she remembered his reaction to the way Ned’s parents casually drank alcohol. May and Ben rarely drank, and he seemed floored that some people did any version of any drug at any sort of regular interval.
When Peter came home, after having apparently spent his whole school day nose deep in a notebook scribbling stuff down, he went straight to his room. He didn’t say ‘hi’ to May, he didn’t grab a snack, and he didn’t drop his backpack off in the kitchen.
May had thought he’d stopped isolating himself this much two weeks ago. She’d finally gotten him to talk to her again when he came home, to tell her about his day and about decathlon. They’d made so much progress and May was terrified of moving backwards on this.
She sat in the kitchen for a few minutes. Last night he’d sat next to her in the living room while she graded tests. Something in his reading sparked a PTSD attack and they’d worked through it. She hoped he wasn’t worried it would happen again.
She stood up, taking a deep breath and trying to get something of an answer out of him.
“Peter?” She called into his room.
“Not dying, just think I’m onto something.” He said.
“What kind of something?”
“Uh, a science kind of something.”
“What kind of science?”
“Uhmmm,” Peter started to answer but must have gotten side tracked. That was fairly normal for him.
“Peter?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah I- Ummm- Yeah one second.”
May waited by the door for a few minutes before giving a knock. “Peter? You’re kind of worrying me hon’.”
“Sorry!” May heard a bit of shuffling and the door opened again. He looked exhausted. He looked like he hadn’t gotten a good night's sleep in a few weeks. He looked like he was barely holding himself together. But for the first time in weeks May saw a bit of fire behind his eyes. He was onto something. “Sorry May, I- I’m trying to figure out if I’m on the right track with this and it kind of makes sense but it’ll sound stupid if I tell you right now so I- uhm, can I like grab a banana and then keep going?”
May stared at him. It had nearly counted as a science rant. She smiled at him. “Yeah, go for it. I- Yeah if you’ve got something go for it. Don’t forget to do your homework, but you said you’d already caught up in that so I- yeah go ahead.”
Peter gave her most of a genuine smile and pulled her into a tight hug.
She hugged him back. They both knew Ben still gave the best hugs, but they both knew they wouldn’t get a hug from Ben so they held each other instead.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too,” He whispered back.
Peter spent the rest of his night in his room bent over a notebook. He kept his door open though which was calming. From what she could tell he didn’t sneak out that night.
The next couple days he came home, did his homework in the living room while May corrected papers, then went into his room to work on whatever this side project was. May texted Rubie to see if Ned was doing the same, and she said he wasn’t. This meant Peter was doing this all on his own which slightly worried her.
“Can I ask what you’re doing?” she said when he’d spent most of his Saturday morning in his room and only came out for lunch. “Or is it still to weird?
“It’s still too weird,” Peter said between bites of an apple. “It’s also not chemistry so I keep getting stuck.”
May gave him an odd look but allowed him to keep his secret.
Saturday night he seemed to try and hide a sensory overload episode from her so she didn’t press the issue when he didn’t come out of his room on Sunday.
Monday, May took a nap on the couch right after work. She barely heard Peter come home.
She woke up to him shaking her softly. She opened her eyes and he was crying. She sat up quickly and pulled him into a hug. They sat there for a few minutes and she kept holding him.
“I figured it out,” Peter muttered eventually, “The science thing.”
“Yeah?” May asked.
“Yeah.”
“There any reason you’re crying then?” She asked even though she felt she already knew the answer.
“Ben would have loved it.” Peter choked out. “He- He would have gone nuts.”
May held him tight. “Want to tell him later?” May asked, “We can go out to the cemetery again, Ned might want to come, he still hasn’t been back and his mom said he’d been meaning to.”
Peter nodded. “I want to tell you first, I- I mean I want to tell Ben first but I-” Peter flinched into her. More than her the memory of Ben’s death seemed to physically hurt him.
“I know hon’, I know.” May rubbed his back. “What were you working on?” She whispered.
“Arc Reactor technology.” Peter whispered back.
This took May by complete surprise. “Really?”
“Yeah, I- well at school we talked about it as an alternative to fossil fuels, and then I got thinking about how it could have happened, and I think Ned saw me googling stuff and I-” Peter curled into her tighter and got really quiet for a few moments. “I don’t know I started thinking about it, and then I kinda got an idea,” He was quiet again, “Then I started writing it down and then I couldn’t stop.”
“So you figured out arc reactors?” May asked quietly. She was shocked to hell, but that wasn’t what he needed right now.
He nodded into her, “I figured out why it hasn’t been miniaturized them yet,” He whispered, “Or I think I did, but I fixed most of the problem, I just need to design a cooling chamber to go around them.”
“Yeah?” She asked quietly.
“Yeah but that would need experimentation with stuff I don’t have.”
“Could we get it for you?” If he was going to get into this she was going to support every goddamn second of it.
“Not unless you want to go on a terrorist watch list,” Peter muttered. “He probably uses Palladium or something. Though that would probably harm his heart if he kept it there for too long, I don’t know.”
May was crying too. “You’re right Peter,” she whispered trying not to let her voice shake, “Ben would have gone crazy over this.”
Peter nodded. “Can we go see him?” he asked, “I’m done with homework.”
“Already?” May asked.
“I finished it during school, it wasn’t a lot and I knew I was close on the arc reactor stuff.” Peter said.
“Yeah, then we can go see him. Why don’t you call Ned and see if he wants to come. Rubie sounded like he’d been thinking about going but didn’t want to intrude. This way you can tell him if you want.”
He nodded into her again. They sat there for a few minutes together. She felt Peter slowly start to fidget into her as his body grew tense. He started shaking with sobs just like his uncle and father did.
“I can’t stop watching it,” he breathed out. May’s heart tore. “I can’t stop seeing it- seeing the way it- it,” Peter let out a sob. “It’s been two months, why can’t I sleep without seeing it?”
May ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry baby,” She whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“I- I don’t think they’re gonna find the guy who did it.” Peter said. “I really don’t. They have to have stopped looking by now.”
May squeezed him tighter. Peter was right.
They sat there together for a few minutes before Peter moved to text Ned and the three of them made their way to the cemetery to tell Ben.
Ned was the first one to suggest Peter find a way to let Tony Stark knows about this. Peter brushed the idea off as ridiculous. Him and May still hadn’t said Tony Stark’s name since Ben died, nevertheless tried to contact him. May brought out Ben’s old laptop and started looking for a way to get the idea out to Stark. She found a September Foundation application. It wasn’t exactly asking for people like Peter, but she got him to sign up and write everything down anyways. Two days later he liked what he’d written about the reactor enough to hit send.
May spent the next two days assuring Peter that the worst thing that will happen is the billionaire will ignore him. The stress of the day lead to an exhausting sensory overload episode which ended with Peter hiding in the bathtub where the least amount of noise could get in.
May longed for Ben to be able to sit outside the bathroom with Peter that night. She longed for her husband to help him out of his clothes so that he could stop worrying about how much they scratched his skin. She longed for Ben’s greater ease at talking with Peter who should probably be seeing a counselor of some sort.
She called Peter in sick to school the next day, and took half a day for herself, allowing a substitute to teach her first few periods. They held each other most of the morning. Ben was still the best at giving hugs.
From there Peter started talking to a counselor at school. He saw her before classes every Wednesday. May didn’t know if Peter would open up, but she was running out of ways to help him work through his trauma and get a good night's sleep. She also hoped that with her confidentiality Peter would be willing to talk to her about his going out at night. That started back again after he figured out the arc reactor tech.
THREE MONTHS AFTER BEN'S DEATH
“May?” Peter called into the living room. It had been a few weeks since he’d sent in the application.
“Yeah?” She was in a rhythm grading exams and didn’t want to stop unless he needed her.
“Do I have to keep seeing the girl at school?”
May sighed and set down her pen. She walked over to his door to see him sitting at his desk with his head laying on his arms. The lines on his face suggested he’d just woken up. “That can’t have been comfortable.”
He looked at his arms, shrugged and looked back at her. “All she does is tire me out, I took a nap through chemistry today in the nurse's office but it didn’t really help.”
May nodded, that didn’t surprise her too much. “You were worried about screaming in the nurse's office?” She asked softly. She let herself walk in the door and pull him into a hug.
“Yeah,” he whispered, “I just- I don’t know May I can’t sleep, and then I have to go in early on Wednesdays and all she does is makes, she makes me-” Peter paused for a moment trying to figure out where to go next. “It’s exhausting.” He said.
"She supposed to help give you some ideas of how to sleep better, how to work through some of the flashbacks and stuff." May tried.
"All she wants to do is hear what happened." Peter seemed frustrated, "I asked her how to stop freaking out every time someone talked about gun control in government and she told me that I needed to work through everything but I- May I can't just stop thinking about it, I need something that can start helping, it doesn't need to be a miracle or anything, I'm not asking for a one time thing, I know- I know this shit takes time. I just feel like she doesn't know what she's doing." Peter was on the verge of a small breakdown.
“We could try emailing your government teacher about it.” May said.
“He pulled me aside after class the other day,” Peter said quietly, “I- Yeah he said he’d give me at least a days warning if he saw it coming up again, that I could excuse myself or study in the library or something.”
“That’s a good start.”
“Yeah but it- it’s really- It’s a bandaid solution. I want to feel like I’m like- I don’t know I feel like I never know what’s happening in my head until I’m about to start panicking or suddenly everything gets loud, and I- I know that really stresses you out because I can hear your heart start to race but I just- I don’t even know how to know it’s coming, never mind how to deal with it when it gets there. I- I don’t know May I just feel like I live every day terrified of my memories and I just want a hug from Ben but I can’t because every time I think of that I watch him die and-” Peter was sobbing, “And I can’t stop seeing it happen.”
May squeezed him tightly and tried to think of what she could say.
“Do I have PTSD?” He whispered. “I- I think I might and I asked the counselor and she said she wasn’t allowed to give diagnoses.”
“I think you do hon’,” May said, “You watched something awful and your brains probably struggling to figure out exactly what to make of it. That’s okay.”
Peter nodded mindlessly, “Ned told me the same thing at lunch today when I told him that the counselor didn’t give me a good answer. ”
“We maybe need to see what my insurance can do about getting you a not-school therapist of sorts.”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know, I- maybe if I actually put in the name I can google some stuff for how to deal with stuff.”
“You can’t google this away Peter.” May said.
He smirked a bit, “I can try.”
May rolled her eyes. “Peter you-” She sighed.
“I know, I know, just, I don’t think I want to talk to anyone right now I- I’ll keep talking to her Wednesday morning if you want, I just- I just don’t want to- I don’t think it’s really helping.”
May ran a hand through Peter’s hair and pulled him close. “I don’t know how I feel about letting you stop, I don’t want it to be making things worse, but I’m really worried about you.”
“I’m okay May,” Peter groaned.
She forced herself not to laugh. “You want to run that by me again Peter? I know I’m not okay, I don’t know how you could be. If you were I’d probably be even more worried about you. This is supposed to suck Peter. There’s nothing good about it.”
Peter nodded into her and they sat on the bed together for a while. She thought about how much it would hurt their income to get Peter into a therapist's office. Ben had been the breadwinner for the family. Her teachers income wasn’t going to be able to pay rent here, so she’d already been looking at new apartments to move to before Ben’s life insurance and pension ran out. Peter didn’t know this yet, but May suspected he’d begun figuring things out.
She would look into the insurance aspect as soon as she could, but likely they wouldn’t support anything until Peter saw his physician and got an official diagnosis. His physical wasn’t due for another couple months and the insurance probably wouldn’t let her move it forward. She really didn’t know what to do if he didn’t start sleeping better. They were both lucky he was successful enough in school, and liked enough by his teachers, that he wasn’t facing any grade problems following Ben’s death.
They sat there for a few minutes before May coaxed him into the living room where they both did schoolwork as best they could. She got him to eat dinner with her and she smiled when he ate a second sandwich before going back to his room where he closed his door.
9 MONTHS AFTER BEN’S DEATH
Tony Stark was in May’s living room.
Tony Stark was in May’s living room and she had absolutely no idea what to do about it. It had been months since Peter had applied for the September foundation. When they didn’t hear back in a few weeks they’d stopped hoping for it. Yet here Stark was. He said he was here about the Foundation, and he said he was here for Peter.
May almost asked what he thought about Peter’s arc reactor technology when the door finally opened. May always beat Peter home from school but normally it wasn’t by quite this much. He must have taken a longer walk home. He’d been doing that recently and May wasn’t sure if it really did help him calm down or if it was related to his sneaking out at night. She pushed the thoughts aside.
“Peter,” she called as he walked in and walked straight to the kitchen to put his backpack down.
“Hey May,” he still hadn’t looked over to see her today. “There was a weird looking car outside, like fancy weird not clown car we-” He stopped as he spotted Tony Stark in their living room. “Uhmm-”
“Hey kid,” Stark interrupted, “I was just talking to your aunt here about your application to the September Foundation,” May saw Tony wink as though there was a secret being shared. “I figured I’d drop by and talk to you about what’s coming out of it and what our next steps are. What do you say?”
Peter stared at Tony Stark. He glanced at May. Then he stared at Tony Stark for another moment. “The- uhm, you’re here for the September Foundation?”
Tony winked again and stood up, “Can I talk to him in private for a little bit, the stuff on his application was legendary but there's a lot of secrecy things we’re worried about. I want to talk scheduling with him.”
May nodded. “Go ahead, yeah,” She gave Peter a look and he shrugged before following Tony Stark into his room.
May had never longed so much to be able to hear through the wall into Peter’s room. Tony Stark was here. Tony Stark was talking to Peter, and hopefully giving him an opportunity. He hadn’t seemed mad with Peter. He seemed like he just wanted to talk.
Peter and Tony came out several minutes later.
Tony was bringing Peter to Germany for a conference. She thought about how much it would mean to Peters academic career to be invited to an event in another country by someone like Tony Stark. Of course she let him go.