Chapter 16
Friday, January 10-Saturday, January 11
“You got everything?” Tony asks on speakerphone, Peter sliding The Fault in Our Stars into his backpack. He’s spending the weekend at May’s, just the two of them, was supposed to be on the subway an hour ago, but decathlon ran late after school again.
“I think so?”
“You think so isn’t going to cut it when you’re in Queens and I have to drive over a box of nebules, kiddo. Do you have the list I sent you?”
Peter glances over to his printer, sees that Tony’s wirelessly printing a list of his meds and a schedule.
“Yeah,” he replies, grabbing the paper from the printer tray and studying it. Daily, steroid, and rescue inhalers and spacers, check. Both types of nebules, check. Extra neb cups and tubing, check. Singulair and steroid pills, check. Nebulizer? Peter grabs the machine from his desk and tucks it away in his duffel bag. Oxygen? He glares at the tank from across the room and groans; he really doesn’t want to have to drag it on the train, not when he’ll probably have to take the stairs because the elevator is always out of order.
“I already sent oxygen and a cannula over to May’s, since it’s so clunky. It’s just in case, so don’t get cranky on me. And May has a copy of the list, too. Call me if you need anything,” Tony insists, adding, “And I mean anything.”
“I’m not gonna need anything,” he wines.
“Kid.”
“May’s a nurse. She’s good at this stuff. And before I lived here, she and I were handling all of this just fine. Relax. It’s two nights.”
Tony holds his tongue, don’t want to bring up the time he had to break the door to their apartment down to get to Peter while May was away, doesn’t want to argue that this is completely different from what May was handling months ago. He doesn’t want to admit that this is hard for him, that even though he trusts May fully and completely, more so than Pepper, even, knowing he’ll be spending the weekend away from the Tower isn’t helping Tony’s anxiety.
“You packed enough socks? A sweatshirt?”
Tony knows that May keeps the heat low to save on the electric bill, that Peter’s room can feel like the Arctic when the temperature dips.
“Yes, Dad,” Peter jokes, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t correct himself, digs through his shirt drawer and grabs three clean t-shirts.
Tony’s grinning like an idiot at Peter calling him dad, has Happy glaring at him like he’s crazy. He throws a hand up as if to say what?
“It’s gonna be fine, Tony. You and Pepper should have a date night or something.”
“Are you telling me what to do with my free time?” Tony laughs.
“Yeah, well, now that you don’t have to worry about me all weekend, you should do something fun.”
“Still gonna worry like crazy, Underoos.”
“I know. Felt nice saying it, though.”
“Wear your watch, take your meds, and slow down if you need to, okay?”
“We’re not running a marathon,” Peter quips.
“You know what I mean.”
“Since when do I not slow down?”
“You want examples?”
“I’ll be fine, Tony. See you Sunday night. Love you.”
x
“May,” he says, dropping his duffel and wrapping his arms around her when he comes through the doorway, tears falling instantly.
“You okay, baby?”
“I just missed you a lot,” he admits, sniffling. “These are happy tears. Promise. It’s so good to see you.”
She tucks him in close, kisses his hair. “I missed you too. So much.”
“And I-I miss Ben,” he admits. “I’ve been missing him like crazy and Tony listens to me when I wanna talk about it, but it’s different because he never met him, you know?” He sniffles and May hugs him tighter, rubs his back.
And he wants to tell her all about Tony’s heart and how he keeps throwing up, how it’s a lot like Ben’s migraines but worse, somehow, but he knows he can’t, knows he’s sworn to secrecy, that May will tell Pepper and Tony will find out and never trust him with anything important ever again, and-
May lets him go and studies his face. “Your thoughts look like they’re flying through your head a mile a minute,” she jokes softly, cupping his face and wiping the tears from under his eyes.
“I need this weekend,” he admits, biting his lip.
“Me too,” she says, smiling. “I ordered a pie from Rosa’s. Should be here soon. Why don’t you wash your face and hands so you can help me set the table?”
“Can we sit on the couch and watch a movie instead?”
May pauses, takes a good, long look at Peter in the doorway. The only word she can come up with to describe how he looks is worn. He’s pale, cheeks rosy from the cold, body still thin from the pneumonia. She thinks he’s supposed to be getting better and stops herself, reminds herself to be thankful that he’s okay, that he’s slowly getting there, that he’s exhausting himself trying to do just that.
“Of course, baby,” she says, pulling him into a quick hug again so that she can kiss him on the head before pushing him toward the bathroom and grabbing his duffel bag.
x
They eat pizza and garlic knots, guzzle Dr. Pepper, and watch My Cousin Vinny on the couch just like old times.
May does a mean Marisa Tomei impression, which cracks Peter up every time Miss Mona Lisa Vito comes on screen, Peter taking over the for the Joe Pesci parts.
When the movie ends, she gets a sleepy Peter set up with his treatment and hands him the remote. He clicks around, settles on Bob’s Burgers because he knows May finds it wildly inappropriate but also hilarious.
“I’m sorry I made you worry,” Peter says softly before putting the mouthpiece between his lips.
“Worry when?”
“Since this happened.”
“I’ll always worry about you, baby,” she says, sitting down beside him. “Not something you need to be sorry about. Knowing you, being responsible for you, is one of the greatest gifts of my life.”
“It’s just…I know you didn’t exactly sign up for this?”
She squints in confusion even though she’s got her glasses on. “Sign up for what?”
Peter lifts his nebulizer mouthpiece up.
“Peter,” she says, sighing.
“O-or my powers?”
“You didn’t choose this, baby. No one chooses any of this.”
“And you didn’t sign up to have to take care of me forever,” he says, and that’s when May just about loses it.
She gives a heavy sigh, pulls her glasses off, and Peter wishes he hadn’t said it, that he’d kept his unfiltered words to himself, because he doesn’t want to hear the truth.
“Peter, I would go back and do everything I’ve done in a heartbeat. You are not a burden to me. Never have been, never could be. You are the most important person in my life not because I’m your guardian, but because I love you with everything that I have in me. Do you understand that?”
She’s got her hand on his shoulder, is watching as her baby crumbles into a mess of tears and spit, drops the mouthpiece and burrows his way against her shirt, lets May hold him there, rocking him, even though he’s wheezing, even though the treatment he’s supposed to be doing is supposed to be helping to calm it down and…
And Peter just wishes he could go back to being small again, like he wished when Ned was standing in front of him with a box of Legos, because everything made sense then, was simple then, didn’t hurt then.
“Tony told me about your appointment.” She rubs his back and kisses his head, and even though he’s almost too big for her arms now, he doesn’t move, feels like he fits just right.
“I don’t really wanna see someone,” he whispers, refusing to show his face. “I don’t want to think about it any more than I already do.”
“Then you can talk about other things,” she says, brushing her fingers through his curls. “You don’t have to talk about your health if you’re not ready.”
“Like I did with Dr. Jacobs.”
May nods. “When it’s ready to come out, it’ll come out,” she assures him.
Peter sniffles, May’s shirt sticking to his face when he pulls away. “Your shirt,” he says, biting his lip and looking down.
“It’s just a shirt,” she says with a small laugh. She absently wipes a hand over the stain. “I have a hundred others, and I’d let you sob into those too if you needed to. You know I would.”
“I know,” Peter says with a laugh before coughing, and May brings the nebulizer back to his lips, helps him sit up.
“You sound congested again,” May comments, and she knows it’s because he’s been crying, but she also knows it’s his asthma.
“Please don’t make me do the vest,” he says, voice gravelly from crying as he looks up at her with doe eyes. “Please. I hate it so much, and Tony makes me do it when I…sound like this.” He looks so defeated, so tired, and May knows that look, knows Peter is telling her he’s reached his emotional limit.
“He didn’t send it over, so you’re off the hook for now,” May says, and part of her is glad, because even though she knows it really helps Peter clear out the mucus that likes to stick around, she also knows that the coughing, and sometimes subsequent vomiting, is painful and exhausting. Tony’s told her as much, and she hates that she hasn’t been there to help him through any of it.
Peter sighs in relief when he remembers it’s still back at the Tower, takes a deep breath of what’s left of the medication.
“Finish and I’ll tuck you in to bed,” she says, Peter rolling his eyes at the sheer idea of it.
“May,” he whines. “I’m not five anymore.”
“Joking, baby,” she says, laughing as she gets up from the couch to clean up the coffee table. “You know I love you. More than-”
“-all the words in all the books in all the world. I know, May.” And there’s more emotion in it than she expects, also a hint of whining, because he is a teenager, after all.
x
May’s phone beeps on her nightstand, a notification that says low oxygen alert from Peter with the number 92 appearing on the screen in the dark. It takes her a moment to process it, and by the time she’s rushed down the hall, Peter’s woken and started coughing. They’re dry but relentless, probably a product of the old heating system and the stale air in the apartment. She finds him sitting up in bed and hunched as he tries to catch his breath when she turns his lamp on.
“Hey, baby,” she coos, going for the oxygen and untangling the cannula. She tucks it under his nose and around his ears, eases him back against the pillows and sits on the edge of the bed. Peter closes his eyes, takes deep, relieving breaths as May rubs his shoulder. “Just like that. Shh. Thankfully not an attack, just low oxygen. You’re okay.”
“H-how low?”
“92.”
Peter groans. “Dunno why it got so hard…to breathe.”
“You’re probably used to the filtered, humidified air at Tony’s. You’re still a little congested. I’ll grab a humidifier when we go out tomorrow, okay?” She watches Peter pant, puts a hand to his forehead out of habit.
“FRIDAY alerts when I have…a fever.”
May nods, remembering, pulls her phone from the pocket of her hoodie and checks the app. There haven’t been any new notifications since the low oxygen alert, but she still feels half asleep, is still trying to figure out all of the technology and the app Tony’s coded to sync FRIDAY’s alerts to help them keep Peter safe.
“I’m okay, May,” he adds, closing his eyes to concentrate on breathing. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Gonna stay with you for a bit, see how you do after you fall back asleep.”
Peter gives a small laugh. “Tony does the same thing.”
May gets the alerts on her phone even when Peter’s at Tony’s, looks at the data synthesis daily, knows how many treatments, hours on oxygen, and mid-night wakeups there’s been. She knows that this disease isn’t fucking around, that the higher the eosinophil count, the more likely exacerbations are. That the pneumonia, which is thankfully mostly resolved thanks to Tony’s medical facility and Peter’s healing abilities, has made all of this that much more intricate and complicated to try and gain control of.
May would be lying if she said she hasn’t second-guessed her decision to travel for work, to leave Peter with Tony and Pepper, to question every medication and therapy Bruce has recommended. Not that she has a choice, really. She just wishes she had the savings to support herself and Peter, that her insurance was better and would provide the medication and devices Peter needs right now. She’d gone on and on about saving up for college during her conversations the last few months with Tony and Pepper because that was the easier excuse. Ben’s life insurance had been minimal, had left her reeling financially in the aftermath, and sometimes, she still feels like she’s making up for it, putting in extra hours for overtime and bonuses with the hope that she can gain more stability for her and Peter. It shouldn’t be so expensive to live in Queens, shouldn’t be so expensive to buy milk and gas and new clothes and shoes for Peter, but it is. As a single parent, it’s been paycheck-to-paycheck for a few years now, was starting to get like this even before Ben left, and she knows that this might not be ending any time soon.
Not until she’s put enough time into her new job to get her first bonus.
She’s been working her ass off so that Peter doesn’t have to know, doesn’t suspect, keeps sending bits here and there to Pepper when she can because it makes May feel a little less like she’s exploiting billionaires to make her life easier. Pepper humors her, is setting the money aside for Peter in a trust. Pepper understands, knows that Peter is May’s end goal, her end game, at the end of every day. It had taken May a while to be open to Pepper’s generosity, since she wasn’t sure if it was out of pity or manipulation, but now, May can’t understand how she could have ever thought something like that about the Stark family, knows it was just a defense to keep her from accepting any help when Peter first started getting sick.
Looking over at Peter, she sees that he’s comfortable, content. The oxygen is helping, just as it should. His levels are normalizing on her app, the same one she’s sure Tony is watching diligently. She pulls the fleece Mets blanket from the edge of his bed over and covers him in it, brushes the hair from his face before turning the lamp off and tiptoeing into the hallway.
It’s been the two of them long enough for May to know that Peter’s not as okay as he’s making himself out to be, that the emotional side of all of this is coming to a head. It’ll be different than it was when he first got sick, she knows. It was like this after Ben, and she’s been waiting, has wanted to see him with her own eyes so that she can see exactly how he’s doing.
The long look, hug, and tears in the doorway and on the couch have told her everything she’s needed to know.
He’s not okay, and that’s okay, May’s decided. If Tony’s role has been focused on Peter’s medical and basic needs, then hers is to focus on his emotional ones. She knows Tony’s been trying to support Peter emotionally, that starting school again has been less than smooth, has caused arguments and brought out a side of Peter that May knows Tony has rarely seen, but she knows her boy, knows that he just needs time.
Time, therapy, and maybe some medication.
And love. Lots and lots of love.
What do we do, May? Peter had asked her at the hospital once the police and social workers were gone, after Ben was gone.
We take what comes, baby, she’d announced, taking his hand even though he was nearly a teenager at that point, finally enveloping him into the tightest, safest hug she could manage despite her own pain. And we do it together.
x
Peter stumbles into the kitchen a little after eight, hair disheveled and cheeks bright red. He’s wheezy, looks miserable, and May’s anticipated this, has been watching his oxygen slowly drop on the app since he’s woken and come off of the oxygen.
“Rough night?” she asks, handing him a glass of water.
Peter nods as he takes the glass, rubs his chest. “Air’s kinda dry.”
May can’t afford filtered, humidified air, has radiators that are probably harboring sixty years’ worth of crap. He drinks the small glass down and puts it on the counter, a slew of tight coughs erupting from his chest.
“You sound horrible,” she mentions. “Do a treatment and take a hot shower, see if it opens you up. If not, we’ll get you back on the oxygen, okay?”
“But we had plans today!” he whines.
She shrugs, trying to hide her concern. “We’ll have a lazy morning and see how you feel. Doesn’t mean our whole day is shot.”
“May,” he groans, the same way he did when he was small and didn’t want to do something.
“I know, baby,” she says, giving him another hug. He squeezes her back, doesn’t let go right away.
“It’s like this all of the time now,” he mumbles under his breath before he pulls away.
“But it won’t always be.”
“You don’t know that,” Peter says from down the hallway, and part of her is glad that she can’t see his face as she says it, because she’s afraid to lose it in front of him, is struggling to balance accepting this and working to make it better.
May wants to tell him he’s right, that she can’t make any promises, but she’s read the research on the Nucala injections, knows that Bruce wants him taking it every week instead of every four because of his increased metabolism and enhanced abilities. They know the specific interleukin causing this mess, and the science, albeit confusing and somewhat contradictory at times because of Peter’s spider DNA, is on their side. She has to put her trust in the science because she refuses to imagine life for Peter going on and on like this. She’s seen more than enough uncontrolled asthma in the ER to know what happens when you don’t treat it properly.
When Tony had called to update her on everything that had transpired between school and MedBay the night everything went to shit, he’d explained that Peter had owned up to skipping meds, had sent himself into another attack confessing it, and May, though worried sick and wanting to be there more than anything, hadn’t been surprised; she’d fought Peter on his inhalers and treatments on a daily basis when Peter was home with her, when it was just two puffs of his steroid inhaler in the morning and one or two treatments a day at the most, before they knew what they were actually dealing with. And while Peter not taking his meds wasn’t even the root cause of all of this, she knows her Peter. She knows how easily and how deeply he feels guilt, even when it’s not his fault, even when it’s something completely out of his control, even when it’s not his guilt to hold.
And yes, May knows that Peter losing his parents, and then her and Peter losing Ben in the manner that they did, along with everything that’s happened with the Avengers these last few years, has been more than enough trauma to last a lifetime, would be for anyone, let alone a kid, but this, this illness, she knows, is Peter’s battle.
It’s his alone, and that’s what makes it so isolating. Because even though May is heartbroken and worried sick despite the fact that Peter is walking talking breathing before her very eyes, she knows she can’t feel what he feels.
She’d feel it for him a thousand times over if she could.
She can be there for him, and hold him, but it just doesn’t feel like enough.
And she also knows that this hasn’t been easy for Tony and Pepper, that even though Peter is a great kid, he’s still a kid, is moody (especially with the steroids) and stubborn as all hell. And while they haven’t exactly said any of this, May knows. She knows what it’s like to raise a teenager, one with superpowers and asthma and a heart big enough to wrap around the Earth to make it a better place if he could.
She takes a deep breath, makes scrambled eggs and toast for Peter to eat when he’s done to keep herself busy, fills the morning/noon/night pill organizer Pepper’s bought for him with his steroids and Singulair, and tries not to let her own guilt at not being there these last few weeks swallow her whole.