Chapter Text
"Oh..fuck...no.."
Peter wasn't sure when or how this begun. He was laying on his bed and going through random stuff on his phone, the kitten he adopted yesterday sleeping at the corner of his room that he had prepared for it.
He realised he had been rubbing his feet together for a while. He knew that wasn't a good sign. He only did that when he was having one of those.
He then realised how tight his chest was feeling. It was getting harder to breath. He had to manually remind himself to breathe or else he would forget about it, holding his breath unintentionally.
The covers that were on him were feeling...to hot? He could feel the bottom part of his body that was under the covers getting warmer and warmer each second. The warmth from his feet and legs and intestines were creeping up to his guts and diaphragm and into his lungs and it was getting so, so hard to breathe.
But he was stuck in that position and couldn't move or get up for a reason he didn't understand why. He closed his eyes in order to block out some senses but it wasn't really helping since all of his other senses were dialed up to 11. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to control at least one of his senses but it wasn't helping. It was too much. He was very irritably aware of each and every one of his heartbeats. He hated it. He hated when everything was too much and there were too many thoughts in his head. Too many of them talking at the same time. He was not able to catch up to any of his anxious thoughts.
He could hear the neighbor's kids fighting and crying just at the apartment over him. Peter loved kids. He loved doing little tricks whenever one of them shouted "Oh my god, it's Spider-Man!!!" when he was out on petrols. Even a little backflip would make them lose their minds and grin widely. "Thank you Spider-Man!!!" "I love you Spider-Man!!" "You're the best superhero Spider-Man!!!" The compliments would just keep flowing after that. He never complained, Peter liked getting compliments from them. Was it a bit egotistical? Perhaps. He doesn't really care
However, he did care when he was having one of his meltdowns and the kids at the apartment above would just not shut up. There it is, he admitted it, although he isn't sure if that's the right word for it. Meltdown? Panic attack? Anxiety attack? Mental breakdown? Existential crisis? He never knew what to call them. They would just come and go. Sometimes with a trigger like too many kids pushing into him in the hallways. Fighting with a gang of robbers? No problem. Bunch of highschool kids? Yes problem.
They didn't always have a particular trigger though, at least not any Peter could pin-point. That was what's happening right now. He guessed it was just built-up from the past week. Guessing didn't really help him though. He still felt like shit.
He was laying in his bed, hands over his face, curled up like a ball, trying to calm himself down when the phone he put to his side a few moments ago began to ring. He rejected the call so the phone could stop making anymore noise. It started to ring once again merley a few seconds later. He was starting to get annoyed by that one Taylor Swift song that he set up as his ringtone. Not sure why he did that.
Pulling away his hands from his face, Peter shook his hands and grabbed the phone and answered the call without looking at the caller.
"Did you just reject my call, kid?" He should've looked at the caller.
"Oh, Mr.Stark hello. Sorry I- I didn't really mean to.." Peter started to explain but Tony cut him off.
"It's okay, no big deal, you just rejected a call coming from the Tony Stark. Y'know, the genius, billionaire, formerly playboy, philanthropist" Tony was obviously just joking around. You could catch it from his voice tone, but Peter failed to catch it because honestly he wasn't really listening.
"I am so sorry Mr.Stark," he blinked and turned off the curtains to block out some sunlight. "It won't happen again Sir."
"Relax kid. I just asked FRI to call you because I need you to come to the tower tomorrow. Can you do that?"
Peter couldn't really focus on what was being said over the phone. Did his phone always make that weird buzzing sound? Or was it coming from Tony's end of line. "Uh-huh, yeah tower, got it."
"Good, I want to make a few adjustments to your suits, watched this weird 1950s movie the other day, and got some ideas. Steve claimed to have watched the movie in the theatre when it first came out. I reminded him that he was a popsicle when the movie came out. Turns out he had seen the prequel, which sucked by the way. I watched that as well, wrote some things down. Anyway I was thinking of.." Peter honestly tried his best to listen. He caught some words every few sentences but they weren't enough to understand the points Tony was making. He also didn't quite understand why Tony was talking too much. He usually just sends a text anyway. Something along the lines of "Come to the tower, suit up" whenever he has a new idea that he wants to test out. Tony had found a really bad day and time to drop the short text and have a full one-sided conversation with Peter.
"..... probably. But maybe not. We'll test that out as well. Are you still listening?"
Peter was rubbing his eyes with his fingers. He wondered what would happen if the sun just disappeared. Actually, he already knew the answer to that. He prepared a presentation on that topic when he was in middle school. It was an amazing presentation with lots of different programs and coding to make it look as cool as possible with really cool translations and images. He had worked for a week straight on it. Abandoned everything else. Forgot to eat anything a few times. When it came to the presentation day, he got so nervous before the class that he puked everything in his stomach just before it. That combined with a few forgotten meals over the course of a week he felt light-headed and had to rest at the infirmary. So in the end no one got to see the presentation, except for his aunt and uncle the following day. A cool presentation in the living room with extra spicy tacos, to simulate the heat of the sun.
"Kid?"
Oh, he forgot to respond. "Uhh yeah a parachute sounds cool.."
Tony's voice got just a bit more serious. "You okay, Peter?"
"Yeah yeah, great actually" Peter respond, a bit too fast, playing with his cuticles. Just then the kitten that was sleeping all this time decided to wake up and let out a small sound.
"What was that?
"What?.."
"That little meek sound"
"There was a meek sound?" Peter played dumb. Not really sure why. It's not like Tony Stark was a kitten hater. No one was a kitten hater. They don't even exist. Everyone loves kittens. He was pretty sure Tony loved them too.
Another small meowing came from the corner of the room. "That sounds like a-" Peter was the one to cut Tony off this time. "I adopted a kitten."
"Uh-huh, and how is that going for you? With the whole Spider-Man thing on the side?"
It was going kinda shit, truth be told. Peter was always so stressed out about taking proper care of the kitten. The kitten was still too young and had to be hand-fed with a bottle every few hours. Peter couldn't take the kitten to school, obviously, so he was just using some of that great spider-bite stamina and swinging by his house to feed the kitten after every two-three classes. He also timed his nightly petrols on the kitten's feeding times. Aunt May offered to help but the kitten would bite her hand whenever she picked it up. Peter never had that problem. The kitten was always so calm with him.
"It's going very well. He doesn't have a mother, crushed by a motorcycle I think, so I just kinda need to give him extra attention." Peter rubbed his fingers together and started shaking his leg. That seemed to happen more frequently ever since he got the kitten.
"Alright, well, bring him to the tower tomorrow as well. Let's do some check-ups on that little guy"
"Sure." He didn't know exactly why Tony wanted to do a check-up on the kitten but he wasn't going to refuse the offer.
"Also, kid, FRI says your heartbeats are faster than the normal. You okay?"
The question caught him offguard. His mental-whatever wasn't over yet than, he thought. "Yeah, I'm- I'm good thanks." Peter got up to fill the glass by his bedside but felt the whole room spinning and dropped his phone. The kitten stared meowing for real this time, wanting some attention from him. The high pitched meowing was disturbing his senses. He shook his head and threw it back, raising his shoulders with it.
"..ter. Peter? You there, kid?" Hearing the voice coming from the phone, he picked it up from the floor. "Yes, sorry"
"What was that?"
"Not sure, it just happens sometimes." Peter gestured the kitten to shush. "It's the senses, I think."
"Because of the spider-bite?" Tony questioned.
"Uhh.." Peter thought about it for a while. "No, before that as well. Spider-bite kinda just...made it more frequent." To be honest, the spider-bite also made the experience more unbearable. Before the bite Peter could fairly manage it. Crowds always bothered him yeah so he stayed away from them as much as he could. He waited a while to get out of the classroom after every lesson. People thought he was stayin behind to ask additional questions to the teachers when in fact he was just waiting the crowd at the hallways to die down a little. He also sit to the backside of the cafeteria with Ned. Being a social outcast helped on this mission of his. All the tables with the most crowd belonged to the more popular kids of the school, which he appreciated.
After the bite though Ned and him had their lunches on one of the picnic tables at the school's backyard. He just couldn't handle all the noise in cafeteria anymore. Ned gave an understanding look when Peter offered this idea to him for the first time. Thought, Peter wasn't sure what Ned understood, he seemed to know more than Peter did about himself. Then he found out about Peter being Spider-Man and said "Ohhh, enchansed senses, that also makes sense." Why did he use the word "also"? Peter never asked and thus never learned.
"...want. How does that sound?" Peter had forgotten to listen to Tony once again. "Sorry, could you repeat that?"
"I can look into a way to develop something that would help with your whole senses thing. You might have to stay at the tower for a bit longer though" Tony offered and Peter felt touched by that offer.
"Yeah, no problem yeah we can do that."
"Great. Have some rest now, kid. No offense but my dead grandma sounds better than you right now"
"Your what-"
"Bye." And with that Tony hung up the phone. Peter sighed and saw the kitten looking at him silently. He looked at the time and suddenly all that meowing from before made sense. "You must be hungry" he got up, more slowly this time and went to feed the
kitten.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day, he thought, but he was also quite excited for it.