Chapter 4
And sometimes I pray
That maybe I will change
Into who you think I am
Why do you keep reaching for my hand?
Do you see something I can't?
Why do you try to save me?
This fate is well deserved
I only make things worse
Why do you try to save me?
-“Save Me” by Noah Kahan
Chapter 4
Tuesday, December 24 - Christmas Eve
Peter finally feels well enough to shower (with help, of course, which he hates, but Aunt May doesn’t seem to mind, so he guesses it’s fine) and eat some solid food; Pepper’s made her infamous chocolate chip muffins, and he’s managed to eat the entire top off of one, which has earned him some relieved smiles from May. They’ve got him back on the cannula for continuous oxygen, but he’s happy to be on the living room couch, watching Netflix and going through the stream of unread messages on his phone while he waits for his next breathing treatment. Tony’s been tinkering in his lab, popping in to check on him here and there while Pepper and May make themselves busy around the tower preparing for dinner guests the next day. Tony’s argued against having people over at all, but Bruce thinks it’s a good idea as long as Peter stays on his med schedule and gets to bed at a decent hour.
After detailing a modified version of the last four days to Ned and reassuring him that he’s alive and well via text, Peter opens his conversation with MJ and pauses with his thumbs over the keyboard.
You okay? Super worried about you, she’s texted in every variation possible.
Just a little chest infection, no big deal, he responds, thinking that his text is the understatement of the century.
You passed out, she counters, an ellipsis appearing as she continues. That’s not little.
I’m sorry I missed your party, he adds, deflecting from the obvious. Wanted to be there.
Wish you could have been. I’m having some friends over tomorrow afternoon to exchange gifts if you’re free.
Peter’s heart rate picks up, happiness flooding through him as he tries to think of a good response. And then he remembers the oxygen line under his nose and the way his lungs are starting to get itchy again as the four hours between his last treatment and his next tick by, and he feels his whole body deflate. There’s no way he’ll be able to go, the truth painful enough that Peter closes his eyes and rubs his face to keep from crying. He hasn’t had an opportunity to think about school and Ned and MJ, has been too sick to think about anything other than breathing, and all this does is invite in the fear of how he’s going to manage being Peter, being Spiderman, if this doesn’t get better.
Tony appears in the doorway, watching as Peter sniffles and reaches toward the giant box of tissues Pepper has left for him on the coffee table. “FRIDAY gave me a high heart rate alert. You doing okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” he mumbles, pulling the oxygen tubing down so that he can blow his nose. “Just FOMO.”
“FOMO?” Tony asks, perplexed as he sits down beside Peter on the couch.
Peter sighs, annoyed that he has to explain, and blows his nose before saying, “Fear of missing out.” He picks up the oxygen tubing and untangles it in his lap.
“Here, let me help,” Tony offers, but Peter swats his hands away and works at lining up the notches to his nose so that they’re comfortable.
“I can do it myself.” There’s a sharpness to Peter’s tone that Tony doesn’t like, but he doesn’t call him out on it because he knows what Peter’s going through. He’s been there, knows what it feels like to have your body betray you, can remember all too well the anger and denial of what’s happening to take over your every thought. He doesn’t want to take this time to work through everything away from Peter, especially not after the last few days. This time alone, albeit monitored by FRIDAY and those nearby, is important. But Tony also knows Peter needs to talk, that he hasn’t had an opportunity to other than to verbalize his panic, and he wants to give him space to do that, too.
“I told you I was fine,” Peter snaps at Tony’s continued presence.
Tony leans back and threads his fingers across his stomach. “Noted.”
“So…you can go, then.”
“Last I checked, this is myhouse.”
“And last I checked, I’m not allowed to leave, so,” Peter throws back.
“Touché,” Tony retorts, laughing.
“This wasn’t exactly my plan for Christmas break,” Peter admits as he plays with the edge of the fleece blanket May’s wrapped him in, and Tony can see the wall come down just enough to push. Gently, of course.
“And yet, you stopped taking your inhalers?” Okay, so maybe not as gently as he’d thought.
Peter’s jaw all but drops at the accusation. “What?”
“I know about the inhalers, kiddo,” Tony says, keeping his tone level. “Or rather, the fact that you weren’t taking them for the last two months.” Peter sits frozen on the couch, afraid to move or speak. He waits for Tony to continue, braces for the yelling and speech about responsibility to start. “While you were sleeping earlier, I had FRIDAY synthesize your health data from the end of August until now. Your heart rate goes up after you take Ventolin and interestingly enough, the small spikes in your heartrate all but disappeared in the months of November and December.” He grabs a couple of M&Ms from the coffee table bowl and pops them into his mouth. “You ever hear of Peak Week?”
“No?” Peter’s confused, isn’t sure he wants to have this discussion right now, but he also knows he’s stuck where he is, that he can’t carry his own oxygen tank without help. Tony’s trapped him, and he wants to resent him for it, wants to tell him to fuck off, but he holds back because he knows how much Tony’s done for him in the last few days, how much of a hassle and mess all of this has been, and as frustrating as it is to be forced into the conversation, he can’t help but feel like he deserves it.
“Neither had I. Apparently, the third week in September is prime for asthma attacks because ragweed is in full bloom.”
“My night attacks,” Peter says, remembering how he’d spent many nights in late September feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest.
“FRI-FRIDAY?” he’d wheezed, sitting up in his bed as he pressed his palm against the pain in his sternum. “Get Tony.”
“I’ve already alerted Mr. Stark to your condition. Help will be with you shortly.” He’d managed two puffs from his rescue inhaler before Tony had barged through his door and started asking FRIDAY for his vitals.
“J-just came on,” Peter had tried explaining as FRIDAY rattled off his heart rate (138) and oxygen level (96). “Already did m-my Ventolin,” he wheezed before breaking into a coughing fit.
“Peter?” Pepper had asked from the doorway, still pulling her robe on. “You okay, honey? FRIDAY said-”
“He’s okay, Pep, just a small attack,” Tony explained as he pulled Peter’s nebulizer from his desk, where he usually did treatments after school, to his nightstand. “Why don’t you get back to bed?”
She’d pulled her robe tighter and crossed her arms against her chest. “You sure? He sounds awful.”
Peter’s coughs quickly turned into dry heaves from their sheer force, but Tony was just in time with the nebulizer mouthpiece, and after a few breaths of the medicine, Peter’s coughing had ceased, his breathing starting to even out. “I’ve got it under control. Go back to bed. I know you’ve got that early meeting tomorrow.”
Pepper debated staying for a moment, the sight of Peter so ill preoccupying her emotions, but when he gave her a thumbs up and a small smile, she let out a small laugh.
“M’okay, Pepper,” he’d stated, voice gravelly from sleep and medicine. “Promise.”
“Have FRIDAY wake me if you need to, okay?” she’d asked.
“Will do,” Tony had assured her. Once she was out of earshot, Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We’ve gotta get ahead of these, kiddo. This is your second attack this week. You trying to give your old man gray hair?”
Peter had scrunched his face and pulled the mouthpiece out. “You already have gray hair,” he’d reasoned, and Tony had just chuckled.
“And you know what FRIDAY told me this morning?” Tony continues.
“That Peak Week is at the end of September?” Peter guesses.
“That you’d had a series of night attacks in both the spring and fall when your allergens were at their peak.”
“She…predicted my attack? After it happened? That’s not really that impressive.”
“She’d noted a seasonal pattern,” Tony corrects, “which I’d coded her to do, and then it just so happened to be that right after that, I’d listened to my morning news stream. That’s where I heard about Peak Week. FRIDAY couldn’t close the gap between the two data points, but my brain did. If we’d had that information in advance, we might’ve been able to get you on higher doses of steroids before you had your attacks, before Peak Week had even begun.”
“But steroids affect my Spidey senses,” Peter whines.
“And they also help you breathe?” Tony counters, shaking his head. His tone shifts from soft to authoritative, and Peter looks down because he knows what’s coming. “Peter, we’ve talked about this before. Breathing comes before Spiderman. Always.”
“I know, I know. It’s just…that was the week that I saved those people stuck in the cable car over the East River.”
“And?”
He sighs. “And I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I was on the steroids!”
“Slow down, Atlas. You don’t have to carry the world on your shoulders,” Tony reminds him. “You’ve got the rest of the Avengers team to be there when you can’t.”
Peter gives another sigh. “I know.”
“You know, and yet you stopped taking your inhalers during the time of year when you’re most likely to get a chest infection.”
He rolls his eyes and leans back on the couch, his arms getting tangled in his oxygen tubing as he goes to cross them. “Keep reminding me!”
“Peter,” Tony says, leaning forward. “I know the high doses of steroids are making you moody, but do you understand what we’re up against here? Because I’m getting the sense that you don’t, which is truly hard for me to believe after everything you’ve been through these past couple of days.”
Peter sighs and keeps from rolling his eyes a second time; just because he doesn’t want to have this conversation doesn’t mean Tony won’t have it with him. He’s learned this, knowsthis. He loves Tony, but sometimes, he thinks, he acts too much like a dad.
Tony takes a deep breath and sets his jaw. “You have a chronic illness from a life event that’s both blessed and cursed you, and if anyone understands exactly what that feels like, it’s me. I’ve been in your exact shoes before.”
“I know, I know. Your arc reactor. Afghanistan. I just feel like this is different, Tony. You don’t have to worry about breathing!”
Tony huffs and pulls his shirt up, revealing the glow of his arc reactor. “Have you ever heard of cardiac asthma?” he asks.
“No?”
“Imagine that your airways fill with fluid and you can’t stop coughing and wheezing,” he says, gesturing at his chest. “Can you imagine that? Because I lived with it every day before I had my new arc reactor placed.” He pulls his shirt back down. “And I lived with it after, when the shrapnel around my heart was jostled loose. Why do you think Bruce stocks so much albuterol in MedBay?”
Peter huffs. “Is this your way of making me feel worse about all of this? I know it’s my fault that I’m sick right now!” he yells, pointing at himself. “So can everyone stop reminding me?! Please?!”
“I need you to understand that you can’t always do what you want in the moment, because if you do, it starts taking its toll on your future health, Peter. You need to learn to balance the things you can control with the things you can’t.”
“I don’t have any control over this right now, or anything else in my life, so I don’t know what you want me to do!” Peter yells, putting his head in his hands.
Tony takes a deep breath and puts a hand on Peter’s shoulder.
Peter sniffles, his lip trembling as he uncovers his face. “Why are you doing all of this?”
“All of what?”
“Taking care of me and spending time in your lab synthesizing my data and making me feel like I deserved all of this?”
“You didn’t deserve this, kiddo. I’m being tough on you because I care. And I promised you I’d do my best to make this better, keep this from happening again. You need someone to look out for you right now, Peter. You’re too sick to do this all on your own. It’s going to take some time for you to get back on your feet, but you’ve got a lot of people rooting for you.”
“I know,” he says, sighing. “It’s just that my brain feels like…scrambled eggs right now from the meds. It’s just…hard is all. All of this is hard and I feel like…like maybe I wasn’t meant for any of this superhero stuff…because it’s obvious I can’t handle any of it. I’m not like you, or Steve. I don’t…I’m not strong.”
“Not strong? Peter,” Tony says, chuckling, pulling Peter in close. “Are you kidding me, kid? Do you have any idea how braveyou’ve been?”
“I sobbed like a fu-sorry, freakingbaby,” Peter explains, sniffling, “and I keep crying even though it just makes it harder to breathe. I’m so tired of not…being able…to breathe.” He’s gasping at the air around him again, but he knows he just needs to wait for things to calm down, just needs a few even breaths to get him there.
“Pete-”
“Jus’…give me a second,” he wheezes, taking a few slow breaths with his eyes closed. “I just don’t get…why it has to be me,” he finally admits. “I wouldn’t wish this…on someone else, but why me? How am I supposed…to be Spiderman…like this?” He sucks greedily at the air from the cannula and gestures to his oxygen tank.
“You don’t have to have all of the answers right now, Pete. You can take your time with this.”
“How long, though? What if I can’t…be Spiderman?”
Tony’s silent for a moment.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” Peter groans in response.
“There’s no one right way to live with this, kid. It’s going to take time to heal, and that’s okay. You don’t have to like it, but you do need to start taking your meds and staying on top of your symptoms.”
“What if the medicine keeping me alive…makes it impossible for me…to be Spiderman, though?”
“Again with that question? I thought I answered that.”
“But you didn’t answer!”
“I did answer it. Remember our chat on the rooftop? About how if you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it?”
“I just wish I could ignore all of this! No one else in the Avengers has anything like this!”
Tony lifts his shirt up to reveal the arc reactor. “You think it’s easy to ignore this and everything that comes with it? Have you spoken to Steve about his asthma before the serum? Because-”
“No, but-”
“You have to decide how you’re going to live with your asthma. Dr. Cho and Bruce can’t decide for you, and neither can I. Only you, bud.”
Peter lets out a frustrated groan and raises his voice. “That sounds insanely cliché and unrealistic and it completely ignoresthat fact that I have to do injections and can’t be Spiderman if I’m on meds that weaken my powers!”
“How realistic does me instilling the fear of God into you if you don’t start taking your health seriously sound?” Tony’s gritting his teeth in irritation, can feel his blood pressure rising. “Because I’m about two seconds away from that conversation, and trust me, Peter, you are not going to like the consequences that come with it!”
“Please don’t!” Peter begs, backing down. “I-I know that what I did was wrong, Tony. I knowthat I deserved this-”
“You didn’t deserve this, Peter,” Tony says, sighing and shaking his head, because where did that anger just come from? “But you diddo something stupid and it landed you where we are now. I’m just glad it happened while you were close to home and not while we were away on a mission.”
The room goes quiet and Peter looks down at his hands, because he hasn’t considered this fact. His asthma’s affected his performance on missions, but it’s always been minimal, a couple of puffs here, a breathing treatment upon returning to the Tower and some Benadryl there. He’s never hampered the team’s ability to defeat the villain or perform, and he’s suddenly understanding why Tony feels responsible for everything that’s gone down. An emotional Tony on the rooftop that day saying, If you die, that’s on me, reverberates in his head.
“You know, I’ve been working on an algorithm and some coding that will hopefully fix the data gaps FRIDAY and Karen couldn’t piece together,” is Tony’s peace offering. He doesn’t want to fight with Peter, not about this, or at least, not right now. He wants Peter to look to him as an anchor of strength, a rock to cling to while he weathers this shitstorm that is his is lungs full of fluid and inflammation even if Tony also feels like he’s breaking into a million pieces. “I want the AIs to be able to continuously track allergen levels and air quality, along with your temp, heart rate, and oxygen levels to predict when you’ll have symptoms.”
“That’s why you’ve been spending so much time in your lab today?”
“What, you thought I was being overbearing and going through your data to find out your secrets?” Tony chuckles.
“Maybe? Yes?” Peter says, afraid that Tony won’t like his answer.
“Well, kid, I’m offended that you thought I was spending Christmas Eve trying to catch you in the middle of a lie rather than keep you breathing, but I digress.”
“No, I…that’s not what I meant, I just…didn’t think it’d be possible to get ahead of this. I’ve just been trying to…live with it for the last year and…I don’t know, I guess I figured it was one of those things that would always be…reactionary? Is that a word?”
“Ah, so the SAT prep course is working.” More like time with MJ after school, but sure, Peter thinks. “What’s really on your mind, bud?” he asks, pointing at Peter’s cell phone. “You’re clutching that thing like it’s the only thing keeping you going.”
“Just my friend. Friends, I mean,” Peter corrects quickly.
“A girl, huh?”
“No, ugh,” Peter groans, falling back into the couch. “Fine. It’s just that I had this whole plan to talk to MJ. See if maybe she liked me too.”
“That was the party you wanted to go to on Friday?”
“Yeah.”
“And then…”
“Yeah.”
“I see.”
“And she can’t see me like this, because then she’ll never ever talk to me again.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Um, the fact that I’m wheezy even on oxygen? And need to use my nebulizer like clockwork? How is that…not grounds for scaring someone away completely?” Peter’ asks, confused.
“If it was your friend in your place, would it scare you away completely?” Tony poses.
“No, but,” Peter says, trying to think of an excuse, sighing when he comes up with nothing. “Fine. Can’t I just be self-conscious? It’s bad enough that everyone’s coming for dinner tomorrow and I look like a Victorian child sick with influenza who won’t make it through the winter.”
“Cheeky, but also, not funny, Peter,” Tony quips.
“Hey, you’re the one who told me the other day that I wasn’t dying!” Peter jokes.
Tony’s eyes are suddenly watering, his jaw shifting left and right as he looks down.
“Wait, you really thought…yesterday, with the epi-pen…” Peter starts, staring in disbelief.
“Yeah, kid, I actually thought you might,” Tony admits. Peter can feel his heart ache as he watches Tony press his fingertips beneath his eyes, his hands folding together over his nose as he cries. “I know I’m not your dad, Pete, but it hurts to see you like this. You’re too good to deserve any of this.”
“Hey, I’m okay,” he promises, scooting closer so that he can wrap his small arms around Tony’s big frame. “It’s okay, Dad,” Peter says without thinking, and as he goes to take it back, Tony pulls him against his chest, rubs his arm and lets him rest there, the hum of the oxygen tank and Tony’s sniffles the only sounds in the room. “I didn’t mean,” Peter begins nervously, but Tony interrupts.
“It’s okay,” Tony says, sniffling. “I didn’t mean to be so hard on you before, Pete. I see a lot of myself in you and I want the world for you. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t think I’m some crazy loon?” he jokes with another sniffle.
“Nope,” Peter replies convincingly.
“How come?”
“Because you picked me up from school and stayed with me on Friday.”
“I’m your emergency contact when May is away.”
“Yeah, but you could have gone to your lab or a meeting or something instead of staying with me, and you didn’t. And then you stayed with me last night, when I was scared and convinced I was dying, and you made sure I wasn’t alone. That’s...not something you had to do for me.”
“It was definitely something I had to do for your, Peter. I wasn’t going to just let you go through all of that by yourself.”
“Thanks, Tony,” Peter says, yawning. He’s feeling tired again, the crying and arguing having worn him out.
“For what?” Tony says, matching Peter’s yawn.
Peter’s closing his eyes, letting the whirring of Tony’s arc reactor and steady breathing quiet his mind. “Everything? Always being there? Even before this,” he says sleepily, closing his eyes.
“You got it, Underoos,” Tony says, and even though his arm is somewhat scrunched against the back of the couch, his leg jutting off at an odd angle that’s giving his foot pins and needles, he refuses to move from his sitting position, wouldn’t change a thing right now, because Peter’s called him Dad, sees him as more than just an overbearing guy in charge of his internship or being his emergency contact when May’s away, and he’s not sure what to feel.
It’s okay, Dad.
Tony lets the tears well up and fall, but for the first time in days, they’re happy. He closes his eyes and thinks about his gift for Peter, the one he’s been planning for months, the one he’s had to make changes to all morning, and wonders if it’ll be enough after everything they’ve just been through. He wants so badly for it to be enough.
Nearly an hour later, Pepper pops in to check on Peter and finds that both he and Tony are sleeping, the two sitting up against the back of the couch with Peter slumped against Tony’s shoulder and chest. She’s snapping a picture of them with her phone before she can stop herself, is careful not to wake them as she dims the ceiling lights so that the tree is luminous in the corner of the room, thankful that, for now, everything is quiet and calm. She takes a deep breath and crosses her arms in the entryway, thinking that maybe this Christmas won’t be so bad after all.