Chapter Text
Peter’s only twelve, but he can’t remember a time when it was truly quiet.
His brain goes miles a minute, and it’s been like that ever since he was a toddler first putting together Legos with Uncle Ben. His thoughts race, and swirl, and spin. Sometimes his brain spins out of control, and those are the worst moments, because he’ll scream without prompting. It had terrified Ben and May the first time it happened, when he was about six. Peter knows it for a fact, even if they won’t say anything about it. He can tell from the way the whole apartment, even the hum of the refrigerator and the slow drip from that one leaky faucet, seem to hold their breath when his mind starts to get loud and drown out all the noise.
His brain is never silent, but in those moments it is so loud that he feels like his skull is going to explode. The school counselor had asked him once (after having a meltdown in his kindergarten class and gripping his pencil so hard it snapped) if he could maybe just stop thinking so much. And that’s the issue, really.
Because Peter can’t stop thinking. It’s like breathing, and he can’t stop himself from wondering and questioning and focusing on the world around him. Even if he could, he’s not sure he would want to-after all, his brain may get loud, but without it, how would he do in school? Peter wants to learn so badly that sometimes he feels like it physically hurts. Sure, he could be doing the work his classmates are doing, but he’s seen it and it’s boring.
Yes, it’s a downside that when he starts thinking, really thinking (and not about school or science or starts), that he can’t stop. Sure, his brain starts to cycle, and he feels pressed down and nauseous. And his tongue will start to feel heavy and his limbs light up and he can’t stop talking, out loud now because if he carries the thoughts in his brain if he keeps thinking things he’ll die, something bad will happen it will to May and Ben he needs to save them-
It’s a lot. And it’s not great. But he has ways to fix it, to stop the cycling and to keep May and Ben safe.
He figured out early on, around eight or so, that if he does these little-routines, he calls them-then things will stay safe, and everyone will be okay.
He flickers the light switch, and turns the faucets on and off, so that they don’t waste energy and lose money, or that the apartment won’t flood and they won’t drown. When May and Ben go to bed at night, he sneaks out of his room and checks the oven, turning it on and off until he feels like it’s right, that he knows for sure that it’s off and that they won’t die. He taps May’s alarm every night before bed because if he doesn’t, it might not go off and she could lose her job. Sometimes he taps it multiple times (fives are his favorite number to tap in) just to make sure it’ll go off in the morning. He washes his hands, over and over, because he can’t remember if he did and what if there are germs and he gets Ned, his one friend, sick because he was careless? He mutters to himself, under his breath and over and over because the words just don’t feel right, and he doesn’t know why but if he can’t figure it out in time (and time is running out) then something bad will happen. So he repeats himself until it’s passable, and his voice is hoarse. But it’ll be okay, because he does his routines.
Everything is fine.
Ben insists that they take Peter to a doctor after what he’ll refer to two years later as The Shower Incident.
He’s ten years old, and he’ll be starting middle school in a few weeks. He knows all the other boys are taking showers, and if they had any idea that he was still taking baths, like a baby , he would get crucified more than he and Ned already do for simply being, well, them.
Plus, he heard that taking showers wastes less water than baths, and he can’t help but worry that his daily baths are costing Ben and May too much money, and if they run out of money then they’ll lose the apartment and then they’ll be homeless and-
So, showers, he decides. It’s time, after all. He’s not a kid anymore.
After dinner is when he usually takes his baths, his homework already done, and so that day he leaves the dinner table just like normal to go into the bathroom. Peter doesn’t tell Ben and May about this-they’ll make a big deal about him growing up, and it makes him feel all weird and awkward when they start to get emotional about it. So he goes into the bathroom just like he always does-he’s old enough to be left alone to run his own bathwater, thankfully-and stares at the shower knobs. He’s a smart kid, so it’s not too hard to figure out how to get the water going.
Before he steps in, he locks the door-he doesn’t want May and Ben to come in and start asking him what he’s doing and talking about how fast he’s growing up again. It’s embarrassing, honestly.
The shower itself is fine-it’s really not that much different than a bath, and Peter finds that it’s kind of nice to not be sitting in a pool of rapidly cooling water. He feels almost like an adult, too. Yeah, Ben and May tell him how mature he is for his age, but he doesn’t feel like he’s very mature or independent, especially considering how easy it is for his classmates to just do things and not overthink every single word they say or thing they do.
The shower’s not the problem. The problem comes when he tries to shut the water off. Peter turns the water off once, and his brain feels like it’s lighting up in danger. It doesn’t feel right, it feels unsettled and wrong and he knows that if he doesn’t shut it off right, then something horrible is going to happen. He turns the water back on and shuts it off again, but it still doesn’t feel right. So he turns it on again, off again, on-again, off-again.
He gets lost in it, not sure how long he’s been in there and how long he’s been turning those stupid knobs. All he knows is that it’s not right, not yet, and he needs to make it right soon or else the horrible thing will happen and it’ll be all his fault.
Peter gets so lost in it that he doesn’t hear the banging on the door, doesn’t notice how hot he’s making the water, doesn’t hear Ben and May calling for him or the sound of May frantically picking the lock with a bobby pin. All he knows is that suddenly he’s being dragged out of the shower and it’s still not right!
He starts to scream as May and Ben wrap him in a towel and Ben rushes to shut the water off, the roughness of the towel finally alerting him to the damage he’s done to his skin. It hurts, and he can see how red his arms are as he tries to scramble out of May’s grip. Ben didn’t turn the water off right, he needs to fix it before the horrible thing happens!
But May won’t let him go, she’s holding him tight and he can’t move, and Peter can’t help but cry, even though he knows how much of a baby that makes him. Flash went on and on for months about how he didn’t cry at all when he broke his arm last year. He’s crying because he’s anxious, because he’s going to be the reason why something bad is going to happen, but what’s also appearing is a deep sense of exhaustion.
He’s tired of living like this. He’s tired of worrying, and counting, and tapping, and feeling like everything is so tight in his chest that he’s not able to breathe.
He’s just so tired.
They take Peter to a pediatrician the next day after The Shower Incident, and his doctor promptly writes down a list of the top five therapists in the area. When she shows May and Ben the list, Peter is still wearing a hospital gown and his glasses are still off, but he knows without a doubt that the two of them are wincing as Dr. Farrish goes on and on about how fantastic they are, and that she’ll call in a favor to get them in soon, to help them cut the waiting list.
Peter is only ten, and he knows that waiting lists mean money, and while Ben and May be full of love and support, they aren’t exactly overflowing with cash. That doesn’t stop the two of them from setting up an appointment with the first therapist on the list, a Dr. Dyle, even with his trying to convince them that what happened was a one-time thing. The idea of talking to someone is making his skin crawl. He’s never told anyone about his tornado thoughts, not even Ben and May. He doesn’t want to let anyone else see.
Peter puts all of his effort into getting out of the appointment, and he can see how frustrating it is for May and Ben. But he doesn’t let up on it, even during the subway ride to his first visit. Only when they get into the waiting room of the office does he go quiet.
“I don’t want to do this,” he murmurs, staring at his shoes as Ben fills out the clipboard that the mean-looking secretary had given him in exchange for fifty whole dollars. His uncle stops writing, and Peter can feel his eyes on him.
“Pete, kiddo, you have to. I know it might feel weird, and I know you don’t want to. I wish you didn’t have to be going through this, and I hate making you do something that’s making you so anxious. But Peter, you need to talk to someone,” Ben says softly.
“You don’t have to make me do this. We could just leave. I won’t tell May,” Peter suggests, and Ben snorts at the suggestion.
“I think May would find out, kiddo. I know you don’t want to, but it’s my responsibility to take care of you, even if you don’t like it,” Ben says, carding his fingers lightly through Peter’s curls.
“Do you ever wish it wasn’t?” The words slip out of Peter’s mouth before he can even think about what he’s asking, because as messed up as he knows it is, sometimes he wonders if his aunt and uncle resent that they have to take care of him. They didn’t sign up to be parents-he was just pushed into their lives.
“Never. It’s a privilege to have the responsibility of raising you, Peter. I can’t stress that enough,” Ben says, looking at him intently. He looks more serious than Peter’s even seen, and he wants to curl up into his uncle’s side and not have to talk to this Dr. Dyle, but he knows that Ben needs him to be brave. He’s already putting him and May through so much, he can make the responsibility of having to be surrogate parents at least a little easier.
It’s not that Dr. Dyle isn’t nice. He is; he’s friendly and patient and willing to listen to what Peter has to say. But Peter is eleven now, and he hates going, hates the idea that he’s weird, hates the idea that the man is going to see through him and realize that Peter has something wrong with him, something that makes his brain so loud that he can’t even breathe. He’s going to see all of the thoughts that pop in his head, the ones that scare him, and then Peter’s going to get locked away. He’s heard enough from his classmates and in the halls of his middle school to know that he’s not normal, that not being normal is the same as being dangerous. That’s the last thing he wants to be.
So Peter doesn’t open up. Sure, he talks, but he doesn’t talk about The Shower Incident or the tornados or how his brain is so loud it’s deafening. He talks a little about his parents and being picked on at school, because those are easy things to understand, easy things to use as a coverup. He’s had enough teachers treat him like a particularly fragile teacup to know that they see Peter Parker as a tragedy. He thinks for a while that Dr. Dyle is buying it, that May and Ben are buying it.
Then Ben walks into his room to see him carefully picking the skin of his thumb up with a safety pin, and Peter isn’t seeing Dr. Dyle anymore. He goes to the next therapist on the list, Dr. Nancy, and she’s a definite change from Dr. Dyle. She gets him to talk, but he’s on edge each session, afraid of disappointing her and the way she pushes at him relentlessly. After he leaves a session in tears and can’t stop crying for the entire night, May refuses to take him back to her.
So then it’s on to therapist #3, who only refers to herself as Kate. After Dr. Nancy, she’s a breath of fresh air. Kate is cool; she seems to understand that there’s some hesitation in him, something that he’s not saying. But she doesn’t push, she lets him talk about Ned and his first year of middle school and his upcoming exams. For his twelfth birthday, she gives him a cupcake at the end of their session.
He makes some progress with Kate, and he can tell that May and Ben are relieved. He flickers the lights on and off sometimes, and it can take him a long time for his sentences to feel right, but he’s not tearing himself apart or scalding himself in the shower. He’s working on lowering his tapping. Peter’s head is still loud, but he’s starting to realize with Kate that maybe he can lower the volume.
Then Kate’s partner gets a job across the country, and Kate leaves when Peter’s away on a weekend trip for May’s family reunion. She doesn’t tell Peter-they only find it out when Ben calls to schedule their next appointment, and the secretary gives them the bad news.
Ben and May try to get in contact with a new therapist. They go to the fourth on the list, but they’re no longer accepting patients, and the fifth therapist tells them outright at his intake appointment that she won’t see him unless May and Ben get a psychiatrist to put him on medication. Peter isn’t personally too bothered about not seeing the last therapist (she smelled like rotten tomatoes), but May and Ben are furious with how she wrote him off.
At that point, they’ve run through the list Dr. Farrish wrote, and they have to start looking on their own. Finding a therapist, a good therapist, isn’t easy, but finding one with no recommendations or way to cut the waiting list is even harder. It’s stressing Ben and May out, and Peter wishes he could help, take on some of the work himself, but he’s getting bad again.
He hot-glued his thumb and pointer fingers together the week before in art, and everyone had laughed when tears gathered in his eyes. It didn’t matter to his classmates that it hurt-seventh graders were just mean.
Ben had picked him up, completely frantic when he heard what happened, but Peter couldn’t explain exactly why he did it. The image of burning the skin off his hand had popped into his head, burning someone else, and it terrified him. How could he explain that he did what he did to make it go away? He would sound crazy.
He’s back to his tapping, but it’s even worse now, it’s constant and his fingers cramp up. He can’t sleep, because he keeps getting up to check the fridge, the oven, the locks, the alarms. He has to bite his lip to keep from repeating the same things over and over again, and it’s constantly scabbed now. When he can’t get his head to be quiet, he rips the scabs off and watches the blood drip down his chin.
He’s washing his hands, constantly, so much that they bleed. When Ned walks in on him in the school bathroom, looking for him when he left from history class, he stared at Peter, and he wanted to scream at his best friend to leave.
Peter is so anxious all the time, and he can’t eat. He wants to, he’s so hungry, but something is stopping him, making him sick to his stomach. He’s afraid if he takes a bite during lunch he’ll throw up all over the table that he and Ned have to themselves at the back of the cafeteria. He starts to lose weight, and it’s back to the doctor when he starts throwing up at school in the morning. He’s not trying to, but he’s so hungry . It’s the exact opposite of what he wants-Peter, as always, is beyond smart, and knows that he needs to keep what little calories he’s getting in, but it’s like the acid in his stomach is constantly pushing at him, and then he gets so nauseous.
Dr. Farrish suggests an eating disorder, but Peter knows that’s not it. He doesn’t want to be thin, he wants to not be afraid. Everything and anything he does, unless he does it perfectly, could cause something bad, something catastrophic. He has to prevent it. But Peter is so tired of carrying that responsibility.
Peter says something to that effect, and Dr. Farrish prescribes him a low dose of Zoloft. Ben is concerned about giving medication to him at such a young age (he and May argue about it, and the walls in their apartment aren’t exactly thin), but at the end of the day, Peter starts taking the pills.
He’s diagnosed with having moderate depression. Peter isn’t sure he agrees. He’s tired of living like this, sure, and sometimes he’s so frustrated about who he is and how long and painful the days are that he doesn’t want to do anything, not to build Legos with Ned, not to eat, not to even use the bathroom. But he’s not depressed-he’s just a worrier. A perfectionist.
Still, the pills help, so if it means taking the diagnosis to get them, he’ll use it. They don’t fix everything, but they do make his brain a little slower, a little foggier. It can still get loud, but there are moments of peace. Sure, those moments of peace make him feel like a zombie, but he’ll take what he can get.
Thankfully, he can pull it together well enough to keep up his grades and spend time with Ned, who he knows has been getting the short end of the stick since essentially the entire time he’s been friends with Peter. He feels bad that he’s a burden to his friend, but Ned refuses to do better, and Peter knows without a doubt that he’s selfish enough to latch on to one of the few people who truly gets him.
So, things are going better. He’s still not seeing a therapist, and he’s not doing as well as he did with Kate, but it’s manageable. Peter thinks that maybe he could make this work.
And of course, things come crashing down again. In January, Ben loses his job at the bank, having taken too many sick days and leaving too many shifts early to take care of Peter. Ben assures him that they’ll be fine, and that he needed the change, but Peter knows he’s lying.
They aren’t in the position financially to only have May working. If he wasn’t such a freak, Ben wouldn’t have gotten fired-it’s all his fault, and he knows it. The apartment gets a little tenser, and while it’s nice to see Ben after school, Peter feels so guilty that he wants to sleep and never wake up.
Ben and May argue more, they get rid of cable and stop visiting their favorite Thai shop every week. Dinners get smaller and they lower the heat to save electricity. Peter never says a word, but he’s cold, and he’s hungry. He’s tired at school and focusing on his work is difficult when he could eat double the portions he’s getting. He needs a new coat, especially with it getting closer to winter weather, but Peter knows they don’t have the money for it, so his thin, worn one will just have to last another year.
Ned, wonderful, amazing Ned, seems to pick up on it, and starts bringing extra lunch and “accidentally” leaving his hoodies at the apartment when he comes over. If it wasn’t for Ned, Peter isn’t sure what he would do.
Eventually, Ben manages to find a job, at a convenience store oddly close to Dr. Dyle’s office. It’s a job, and it’s money, but he’s simply not making as much as he did at his old job, even though he’s working more hours. His hours, too, are an issue. He’s the newest employee, and he gets stuck with the night shifts.
It’s an obvious problem. Ben used to pick Peter up after band or robotics club when he got off his shift from the bank, but he’s going into work when Peter is getting out, and May doesn’t leave the hospital until six. Peter begs to be allowed to use the subway, but his aunt and uncle refuse to let him.
“Predators can be anywhere, Peter, and they’re looking for kids who are alone. Putting you on the subway by yourself is putting you at risk,” May explains, and Peter can see suddenly how tired this ordeal, the ordeal of having to be a mother to a kid who just doesn’t work right, is taking a toll on her.
It’s Ned who suggests that Peter wait at the library for May to pick him up every day. (He offered to let Peter come over after school for as long as he needed, but he can’t do that every day. He can’t be a burden to Ned.) Ben and May still aren’t happy with the idea, but they admit it’s better that he be alone in the library than alone on the subway.
So in March, Peter starts his new routine. He wakes up, takes his medication, tries to avoid checking over and over again to see if he has all of his things before Ben takes him to school, gets through the day, eats lunch with Ned, finishes the day with gym (always the worst), goes to either band or robotics, and then goes to the library a block from his middle school. He reads until May can pick him up, and then he goes home, eats dinner, and thinks of Ben as he goes to sleep. Wake up, repeat. His brain is still loud-no surprise there. But he doesn’t have a choice to do anything but just get through it and hope it’ll get better.
Peter is twelve, and he’s never known true quiet, but he’s trying to live with that. He hopes, more than anything, that he can keep things under control, that he can be okay. For a while, he thinks that he can.
That’s when he meets Skip Westcott.