Air I Breathe

It's the same fight all over again
It's the same bite breaking on my skin
It's the same light when you let me in
You let me in you let me in
You are the air I breathe
-"Air I Breathe" by Mat Kearney

Chapter 1
Friday, December 20

Peter’s StarkWatch vibrates on his wrist just as Mrs. Benninger, his chemistry teacher, deigns to claim that CATions are PAWS-itive in a last-ditch effort to make the topic even more cringe worthy than it already is. He stifles a laugh, which quickly becomes a short series of coughs, curses this stupid cold he has, and waits for Mrs. Benninger to have her back to the class to look at his message.

FRIDAY says your heart rate’s been high, Tony texts. You okay, kiddo?

He closes his eyes and tries to think of a response.

Truth is, his lungs feel like they’re filling with thick, heavy sludge. It’s been like this for a few days, but he’s brushed it off as indoor allergies since his school was built in the early 1800s and probably has dust from then lurking in the shadows. It wasn’t that bad until he ran for the subway this morning, the chilled December air causing his lungs to seize before forcing honking, choking coughs that left Peter leaning against a random brick building taking puffs from his rescue inhaler. He hasn’t had to use it in a few weeks, but he has an awful, nagging feeling that this morning was only the beginning of another downward spiral.

Karen, his AI, has been sending him high heart rate alerts all day, and now he knows that Tony’s been getting them, too. At first, he thought maybe it was the two large coffees and the inhaler, but then he’d hit 140 after he had run up four floors and was subsequently late to his trig class because he couldn’t get the coughing to stop. Cheeks red and eyes watering, he went into the bathroom to wash his face, take his inhaler, and calm his breathing down. It had taken nearly 15 minutes, and he’d had to lie and chalk it up to a stomachache to avoid getting detention.

It’s not until now, in his chem classroom which has always been a few degrees below Antarctica, that he thinks he might have a fever. He had an inkling earlier, when Ned, who is never cold, was bundled up in English class and Peter felt like he was sitting on the surface of the sun, but Karen hasn’t alerted to a fever, so he’d shrugged and pulled his sweatshirt off. He’s been holding out on going to the nurse or calling home because there’s only three periods of school left before MJ’s Christmas party at her apartment in Chelsea, and Peter has been looking forward to this for weeks. He’s got an ugly Christmas sweater ready to go, one that reads “Tis the Season to Be Amazing” with Spiderman hanging upside down by his web shooters. It was going to be his conversation starter, the lead-in to telling MJ just how amazing she is and much he likes her. Tonight needs to happen. Has to happen, because Tony is having a New Year’s Eve party in a week’s time and Peter is planning on kissing MJ at midnight.

With her permission, of course.

But he can’t get her permission if he doesn’t have the chance to tell her how he feels and invite her. He’s already planned to take a quick nap, dose up on Dayquil, and catch the subway to be there by 7. It’s just a cold, after all.

He feels his StarkWatch vibrate again, but this time it’s Karen. Peter, you currently have a fever of 102.4. Shit. He rubs at his chest, which is feeling kind of funny, and sniffles to keep his nose from running all over his note packet. His pencil rolls off of the desk and it takes him a moment to register that it’s hit the tile.

“Peter?” he hears MJ whisper from the seat beside him as she tries to push his pencil on the floor toward him with her foot. “You don’t look so hot.” And Peter would laugh if he could, because he’s definitely burning up and sweating through his t-shirt in late December, but right now he’s feeling like he’s stuck in his own webbing, his muscles tight and sluggish as he tries to get his body to cooperate and react.

“Need something, man?” Ned asks from behind him.

“I’m okay,” he whispers back, but even he’s not convinced. He feels the world around him spin as he leans over and gets a false grip on the back of his chair, his body tumbling forward, and suddenly he’s on the floor, the underside of desks with globs of gum stuck beneath them and stark white ceiling tiles filling his view before his eyelids, heavy and burning from the lighting, close.

x

Peter feels like he’s stuck in a cloud when he opens his eyes, everything too bright and fuzzy for his liking. He puts a hand up and tries desperately to lift himself up with his free hand.

“Woah, there, take it easy, kid,” Tony is saying as he gently guides Peter down onto the crinkly paper of the nurse’s office cot.

Peter licks his dry lips and tries to get his eyes to adjust to the brightness, his chest muscles pulling as he struggles to breathe against gravity. “Tony?” His voice is weak, full of fear and confusion and Jesus, he feels like his body is on fire. Why is everything on fire?

“Right here, bud.”

“Wha’s goin’ on? Where’s May?”

“Still on her business trip. You’ve got a pretty high fever and your heart rate is through the roof. Gonna get you home and get both of them down, okay?”

“Did I pass out?” He closes his eyes in embarrassment because he knows he did, knows that he’s scared the shit out of Ned and Mrs. Benninger and MJ.

MJ.

Ugh.

“It’s okay, it happens. The important thing is that you’ve only got a small bump on your head. Nothing major.”

Peter grazes his hairline with his fingertips, coming up with nothing until he touches just above his ear. He hisses as he passes over a small lump.

“Got some ice for the road,” Tony says, placing the pack gingerly atop the affected area. “Happy’s waiting for us downstairs. Think you can sit up?”

Peter nods without thinking, the nurse appearing with a wheelchair. Peter wants to protest, but he barely makes a face. His head is pounding and he’s finding it hard to get enough air in, the change in his blood pressure as Tony helps him sit up making his head pound. If death was a feeling, he thinks, this is surely it.

x

“Didn’t need to pass out on us to get our attention, Pete,” Bruce jokes as he listens to Peter’s chest again in the MedBay. Peter’s kicking himself for thinking Tony would bring him anywhere but here after fainting at school. They’ve got him hooked up to oxygen in the form of an annoying nasal cannula that’s making his nose itch and a misting nebulizer mouthpiece that only seems to be making him cough. He’s miserable, hates that Bruce made him put on a stupid gown and monitors to track his heart rate and oxygen levels. Peter lost count after the eighth vial of blood that was taken, each glance over having made his stomach flip. He knows he’s sick, has something brewing in his lungs, and hopes that within the next hour he can just hide away in his room doing breathing treatments and playing video games. “I’m thinking bronchitis because of the cough, but I’ll have Dr. Cho confirm with x-rays. Have you been taking your inhalers?”

If there’s one question he hates being asked, it’s how often he’s been taking his meds. Peter never asked for a spider bite to come along and change his life, one that not only gave him superpowers, but also an overactive immune system that just so happens to impact the simple act of breathing. He likes to think that anyone who actually knows what it’s like to have asthma would never ask that question so nonchalantly, and doctors, Bruce and Dr. Cho specifically, always feel privy to what feels like very personal information to Peter. But he knows he has to give it up. He’s not ready for Tony to learn that he’s just been spraying them into the air rather than breathing them in and dealing with the side effects, wishes he could crawl up into a ball beneath the scratchy white blanket over his legs and wait for everyone to leave to come back out.

He knows that isn’t going to happen, though, not with the way Tony hasn’t so much as smiled since he picked Peter up from school. He’s standing at the foot of the bed trying not to look stone-faced, but Peter can see the way his eyes are laser-focused on the monitors. On Peter. He can’t tell if Tony knows already, is angry or disappointed or scared, and it only makes Peter feel worse. He wants Tony to answer, wants him to reassure Bruce that FRIDAY has all of the data she needs to answer his question.

The room stays silent except for the beeping of the monitor and compressor of the nebulizer.

Peter pulls the mouthpiece out and swallows hard. “Not really,” he finally manages, closing his eyes. He wants to cry, but he’s not sure his lungs can handle it. At the moment, they feel like they’re about to shatter. Or burst. Maybe even both. Tears pool behind his closed eyelids, finally sliding from the edges and down his cheeks as he tries to keep himself composed. “I-I...I’m sorry. This is still new to me…and I don’t like how they make me so wired…” He takes a shuddering breath and continues with “Colleges look at your grades and the meds just…make my ADHD worse…and then when I’m Spiderman, it’s like I can’t get…my brain to think…and I was afraid that I’d fu-…sorry, mess up, and I really….really don’t want you to be…mad at me…’cause…’cause…” He’s run out of air, is trying to suck in whatever he can from the oxygen under his nose, but his lungs don’t seem to be taking it, feel full even as he tries to expand them.

Alarm bells from the monitors are sounding, and he almost doesn’t hear Tony ask, “Peter? Hey, stay with me bud,” from his bedside.

Bruce is raising the bed as he says, “I need you to relax, Pete. Can you try to do that?”

He wheezes in return, his hand gripping the blanket as he uses all of his last available energy to get one decent breath in. “Can’t breathe,” he whispers as he focuses on Tony, but instead it comes out as a long, painful, drawn-out wheeze. He’s sure his eyes are opened as wide as can be, can feel his shoulder muscles tighten, lungs itching to cough as he begs them to calm the fuck down because he’s not even sure he can get the trapped air out.

Peter’s had attacks, has been in this exact bed in MedBay with Bruce listening to his chest while he takes a breathing treatment, but this? This is something entirely new. He’s never felt darkness fill the edges of his vision like this, nor has he felt like he was drowning on dry land. Scared feels like too easy of a description to use, feels worlds away from whatever the fuck this is.

He’s mouthing, gasping, the word help over and over as Dr. Cho rushes in. Suddenly, there’s a mask over his nose and mouth, and he feels the IV as it’s inserted into his hand. He can taste the saline on his tongue and grimaces, but soon, he can feel his lungs loosening just a little, listens as the wheezes grow more sporadic. Tony pulls Peter’s hand from its grip on the blanket, his fingers relaxing as they’re held tightly. He tries to look over, but the mask tugs, the mist blurring his vision and ability to focus.

“Help,” he continues mouthing, because his voice just won’t work, but he’s not sure anyone can see behind the mist that must be a double albuterol neb because Peter’s heart feels like it’s about ready to beat out of his chest. It takes what feels like hours for his lungs to settle into a pattern of longer, deeper wheezes that fill the room. He hates the way it sounds like he’s a dying seal, how he can’t control them or keep them from sounding so horrible.

“Don’t let the wheezing worry you, Peter. Take a slow breath in,” Dr. Cho instructs, and Peter feels his shoulders slump in exhaustion as he prepares to take a careful and calculated breath. It feels a lot like tempting fate, and he closes his eyes as he does it, worried his lungs will still be just as locked as they were before. He’s surprised when he’s able to comply, can feel the cool metal disc of a stethoscope moving around the front of his chest and then his back as he keeps up the pattern of slow, controlled, but still painful breathing. “Definitely pneumonia. Left lung is collapsed. Can we get Sanchez in here with a portable x-ray? STAT?” she asks as she throws the stethoscope over her shoulders.

“Pneumonia?!” Peter’s saying beneath the mask, his breaths quickening, but Tony is shushing him, brushing his unruly brown hair out of his face with his free hand.

He barely notices that Tony’s got his IV-free hand gripped tight, is rubbing his thumb over his wrist as a means of comfort. “It’s alright, kid. Just some antibiotics and you’ll be good as new.”

“Collapsed?!” Peter croaks, the fear and frustration coming out in one, long wheezy sob, and then another. One of monitor alarms sounds, and then a second chimes, alerting everyone to his shitty lungs once again. He forces his eyes closed and lets the river of panic and embarrassment flood.

“Pete, hey, hey, it’s okay. We’re gonna make this better,” Tony whispers, pulling Peter up and against his chest, warm arms wrapping around his body and rocking him back and forth. He adjusts the tubing from the oxygen and pulse ox and IV so that they aren’t stuck on the railing and pulling uncomfortably. “Relax, Underoos,” he whispers, continuing his rocking, and the nickname catches Peter off guard. He sniffles in the place of one sob, and then another, his breaths and wheezing erratic. “We need to get your breathing calm and your heart rate down.”

“I’ve gotta call Aunt May,” Peter says, leaning into Tony’s embrace, sniffling. “Gotta…let her know…’cause she’s gonna…worry…a-and…”

“We’ll call May. I’ll get Happy on that. For now, I just need you to rest. Get your mind to stop spinning.”

“But what if…what if I-” he asks into the mask, panting.

“You’re not dying, Peter,” Tony assures him, rubbing his back as he continues to rock back and forth, back and forth. “Shh. I know that was scary. I know, kid. I’ve been there. It’s not a fun place to be.”

“F-felt like it,” he whispers, not sure at first if he’s even said it aloud. The tears are still sliding down his cheeks and around the mask, pooling on his gown. He takes a sharp, painful breath in and immediately regrets it. The fast exhale leads into a coughing fit that’s got the monitor alarms going off for a third time. He pulls away from Tony, choking on the mucus that’s decided to work its way up and out of his lungs. The mask is pulled down around his neck and a basin is forced beneath his mouth as he spits out thick, dark green gobs. He’s gasping between coughs, the darkness returning to the edges of his vision, and then, just as quickly as the coughing started, it stops.

Peter is hunched over, gulping at the room air for a moment before Tony refits the mask over his mouth and nose and guides him to sit up against the bed. He’s tucking him in, rubbing his arm as they wait for Peter’s heart rate and breathing to calm.

Tony stands when a man enters the room with a portable x-ray machine, Peter instantly grabbing for his hand. “Don’t leave,” he begs weakly, the last coughing fit from just a few minutes ago having taken every sliver of energy from his body. “Please don’t. I’m scared, Tony. I-I’m s-scared.” His eyes are glassy and welling with tears, the monitor showing an increase in his heart rate.

Tony bites his lip and holds back his own tears by looking up at the ceiling to compose himself. “Not going anywhere, Underoos. Just need to let them do their x-ray and then I’ll be right back here.”

“P-promise?”

“Promise.”

By the time the x-ray is finished, and the machine has left the room, Peter can barely keep his eyes open. Tony’s back at his bedside and he doesn’t sit until he’s made sure that the blankets are re-tucked and that the tubing and wires are untangled.

“Don’t feel so good,” Peter admits, and a pang runs through Tony, one only made worse by watching Peter struggle to breathe even with the mask, the usually high-energy teen propped tiredly against the bed, his face so pale he wonders if he might blend in with the pillows at any moment.

Bruce re-enters the room with his eyebrows knitted, and he and Tony have a wordless conversation with the shared hope that Peter is too out of it to notice how dire things have become.

“We’ve got him on a high flow of oxygen,” Bruce explains quietly. “But by the look of the x-rays, with his lung collapsed like this, we feel it’s best to go in and drain the fluid. Dr. Cho is preparing a team as we speak.”

“Go in?” Peter muses weakly from the bed. “Wha…what does that mean?”

“Peter, one of your lungs isn’t working properly because of the infection. Dr. Cho and I need to drain it so that you can breathe easier.”

“Surgery?” His heart rate rises slightly on the monitor, but he’s too tired to argue or even cry, and Tony turns in his chair to let a couple of tears fall, because how did he miss this? How did he miss the fact that Peter was getting sick to the point that he’d need surgery to correct it? “Tony?” Peter’s asking, his arm reaching out for his. “Tony, I’m scared. I d-don’t feel…well...and we didn’t call…May…and she’s t-travelling…for work…a-and…”

Tony wipes his own tears away and turns to be with Peter, biting his lip as he brushes Peter’s hair from his face. “I know you’re scared, Underoos. It’s normal to be scared. I was scared before my surgeries, too. But you have the best of the best here, and when you wake up, you’ll feel like a million bucks.”

“Aunt May?”

“I’ll call her personally, okay? I’ll make sure she knows exactly what’s going on.”

“Promise?”

Tony sniffles. “Promise, kiddo.”

“You’ll be here? When I wake up?”

“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he insists, and Peter smiles a little behind the mask.

Bruce pulls a syringe from the drawer of the med cart and approaches Peter’s IV line. “I’m going to give you a little something to relax you, Peter. You might get a little sleepy.”

“Tony?” Peter panics.

“Still here, bud.” Tony takes Peter’s hand and squeezes it, carding his fingers through Peter’s hair in soothing strokes. “I’ll always be here.”

It’s the last thing Peter hears before he drifts off, his body relaxing for the first time since he can remember.

x

Waking up is hard. Peter’s body feels like it’s been hit by a bus, and while his lungs feel markedly better, they still feel somewhat full and achy. And whatever is by his nose seems to be breathing with him. He tries to open his eyes, but the room is bright.

“There you are,” Tony says softly, and Peter can feel him brushing his hair from his face again. “Go ahead, open your eyes.”

“I can…breathe,” Peter remarks, blinking as his eyes adjust to the brightness. He likes that there’s no mask over his mouth and nose, which is what he’d been expecting. He feels freer, better, than he did, but he’s sure it’s just whatever pain meds they’ve got him on.

“Oxygen levels have improved. Your left rib area might be a little tender, so try not to lay on that side,” Dr. Cho comments as she goes to listen to Peter’s chest with her stethoscope.

Peter brings a hand up to whatever contraption is shoved up his nostrils and marvels at how it’s able to force just enough air into his lungs to help him breathe.

Between listens, Dr. Cho explains, “We’ve got you on a positive airway pressure cannula. It’s enough ventilation to aid your breathing without taking over entirely. You were working pretty hard to breathe earlier, and with the ventilator during surgery, we thought it’d be best to give you a little help, get your lungs healed up without stressing them further.”

“Aunt May?” he asks Tony, his eyes drooping with exhaustion.

“She’s trying to get here. Her flight was delayed out of Dallas due to a snowstorm in the Midwest. Why don’t you rest, kiddo? Get some sleep so you can be ready for when she gets here?”

“You’ll wake me?”

Tony debates the idea for a moment, worries that Peter not getting enough sleep is exactly what got him here in the first place, but finally, he says, “I’ll let her wake you, okay?”

Peter nods before closing his eyes and letting himself drift off once again.