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when peter so frequently forgot how to be a person, he scheduled his days down to the minute. maybe it was a desperate bid to grasp at the control he’d previously found in food, or lack thereof, but whatever it was held peter together at the seams.
he woke in a haze of beige, a thick oil paint mixed with polyfiller to pull the (not entirely unwelcome) mask over his face in a grainy mess that didn’t so much hold his eyes closed as much as it gently coaxed them shut, promising to stay with him until his breathing stopped. for a few seconds upon waking every morning, peter liked to breathe in and pretend that he was normal, and that he didn’t have so many scars that he was more emotional keloid than flesh, and that he was fine (as long as nothing prevented him from self-destructing in an amazing show that lit up skies and set everyone he loved ablaze). the illusion always cracked, hairline fractures crawling lazily up the thin glass that was his decaying mental health, as soon as he swung his feet out of bed. to peter’s right, he could see that a few strands of hair had fallen out during the night again because as much as he tried (but he only really tried half-heartedly, sure that his outburst outside of the gas station was a result of delirium and intoxication rather than a genuine cry for help) he couldn’t eat enough to feed his body what it needed.
peter parker had a body mass index of sixteen point seven, and he wasn’t as scared of that fact as he should have been.
when he dragged his gaze from his pillow down to his feet, peter shook each foot, trying to get his blood to cooperate for once and let him at least have to feeling in his legs. his circulation was so poor that if he stood up too early in the morning, it only took a couple steps before he fainted. peter sighed tiredly, dragging one skeletal hand down his face. he could barely think, his brain either too fatigued to control the basic functions of keeping its body alive or stuck in a vicious battle between his basic survival instincts and his complete aversion to anything that could even slightly be related to food (apart from cooking and baking shows. while watching them, peter would sit with his nose practically rubbing the screen of his laptop while both of his hands pressed down on his shrunken stomach, stopping it from growling out of turn. late at night, watching pixels on a screen make food that peter couldn’t even imagine the taste of anymore, he allowed himself to want).
the mundanity of everyday life was only made all the more dull when the motions were gone through by someone who didn’t want to be alive, much less awake. peter felt like the metaphorical photographs that made up his life were set apart in the sun for a few weeks, and when they were retrieved, their colours had been bleached by the light. it only made sense that something had to crash and burn now that so much else had been looking up for him.
peter brushed his teeth and listened to may beginning to stir in her bedroom. sometimes she downed two or three shots of the alcohol she now kept in her wardrobe before she interacted with him but it seemed that she didn’t feel it was necessary. maybe she’d drink while he was at therapy.
“morning, pete,” may called. peter replied because it was what was expected of him and he owed it to may to be a good nephew for at least half an hour before he made her cry again by looking at breakfast like it had insulted his dead mother.
a few well practised movements of a daily routine later, peter was mechanically chewing his food. he let his mind drift out of the window, out into the sky until it was so far from the plate in front of him that he could barely even register the fact that it was there anymore. it contained his breakfast. breakfast was now an alien concept to peter. he was so unused to following regular mealtimes and so accustomed to consuming and expelling that actual meals hadn’t even crossed his mind before may had shoved a plate in front of him the day after he was allowed out of the medbay. her eyes had begged him to just eat the damn food, and a chord of guilt resonated throughout the hollows of his body.
that was the first emotion he’d had in days, the seventy odd hours before that passing in a dissociative fugue right after the conversation with aunt may and sending tony out of the room and having to cry and admit that he was dying and he needed help and why had he cancelled on doctor zelah how could he hide this and how dare he let it get this bad and and and-
it was no good dwelling on what had passed. all that mattered was that the first sign of his brain clawing its way back to consciousness was the crushing guilt. he’d taken the food on the plate (no longer a sandwich and an apple but 400 calories sitting on a plate just waiting to settle itself down around his waist and over the ribs that peeked so nicely from underneath his bruised skin) and he’d eaten it. he owed aunt may that much.
bringing himself back to the present, peter noted with a dim, creeping sense of dread that his first appointment with doctor zelah was at 4 o’clock that afternoon. that was the first thing even approaching social interaction outside of may that he’d attempted since he got out of the medbay. peter knew that it was unfair and misguided but he couldn’t help but hate tony and bruce and steve and every damn avenger who’d been so intent on putting him in a hospital bed and making him fat. the fact that they seemed to genuinely care about him and what he was doing to himself made his skin crawl with the terrifying fear of abandonment, which brought so much anger with it that when he’d regained his ability to feel, peter thought he would keel over and die right where he stood. may caring about him was something that was unsurprising but still unwelcome. he couldn’t help but feel resentful of may, who he heard cry every night in her bed because despite her best efforts, peter was still losing weight. he didn’t ask her to care about him, and the fact that she even tried to hide her distress set peter on edge. he was never fooled, but may wore such a huge smile on her face that peter was half afraid that her entire head would fall off.
may was losing weight. she barely ate anymore. peter wondered if eating disorders were infectious and why she put meals in front of him five times every day when she probably only choked down a breakfast bar and some lettuce in the time she made him look disdainfully at seventeen thousand calories a day (most of which he ended up either throwing into trash bags to dispose of while she slept or scraping onto the plate under his bed to binge on like a rat in the middle of the night before silently purging) while she shut herself in her room and convinced herself that she was doing the right thing.
passivity took over his very life, and peter watched the clock hands creep steadily closer to four, letting himself eat breakfast but sorting the rest of the food he was given into ‘easily purged’ and putting it on the plate under his bed or ‘not easily purged’ before letting it slop into a bag. bruce had told him that until he reached some ridiculous goal weight (because who the hell did he think he was, spitting out the words “one hundred and twenty pounds” like they were nothing, like he wasn’t asking peter to give up everything that had become important to him by gaining twenty five pounds?) he couldn’t go back to school. maybe everyone was afraid he’d have a heart attack at the bell signalling the end of each period. maybe peter didn’t give a shit anymore.
he was maintaining his weight now instead of losing it, which made peter slightly nervous to think about for too long but it wasn’t anywhere near the anxiety attack that’d left him screaming at his mirror a couple weeks before when he thought he’d put on more fat. sometimes the plate under his bed was enough to binge on if he let the food build up for a day (but no more than that; peter may have been disgusting and horrifying and dirty and wrong and revoltingbut he wasn’t going to eat food older than a day when it hadn’t been in a fridge) but sometimes he put on his spider suit (which had been hesitantly given back to him to make sure he didn't repeat the homecoming incident and go out in the pajamas he used to call his costume) and swung until his arms felt like they would pop out of their sockets and raid whichever supermarket, gas station, or fast food outlet was nearest to him. it was a grim existence, but at least peter didn’t have to hide anymore. at least he didn’t have to pretend like his life wasn’t falling apart and at least he didn’t have to make up an excuse every time he picked at a piece of food like he’d rather it ate him than the other way around. peter parker didn’t have the energy to keep up false pretences anymore.
may stood outside of his bedroom door. he could hear her breathing, and he could hear her slightly elevated heartbeat. her heart always beat faster when she was around him, lately. it made peter feel sick to think that it was because she was so anxious about him that her body went into fight or flight mode whenever confronted with the primary threat: him.
“hey, peter, mary poppins is on the tv. you know i sound awful singing along to those songs alone, so would you maybe want to watch with me?” may asked when she finally gained the courage to step into peter’s field of vision.
“no,” peter replied flatly. usually, he would’ve jumped at the opportunity to pretend that their old life hadn’t been pushed to the shadows in favour of whatever this was but now he was afraid that the reminder of his old self (and his old life and his old eating habits and old relative security in his own damn body) would make him cry. peter hated crying. it took too much energy, these days.
it was too soon before peter was being driven to his therapy appointment (because both may and tony had point blank refused to let him walk there) by may. she seemed oddly calm, but then again, she might have just gotten better at hiding her panic. the outside of the office seemed overtly friendly, which only served to make it more hostile. a mental breakdown wrapped in pages from a self-help book was still a mental breakdown, and peter wasn’t looking forward to unwrapping what lay behind his eating habits any more than may was looking forward to dealing with the fallout of the first therapy appointment.
“you just- just speak to him, okay? let him help you,” may stuttered when she’d parked the car in front of the office. “tony will pick you up when you’re, uh, done,” she finished. peter only picked up on the slight waver in her voice because he’d been listening for it. may couldn’t deal with the fallout of his first therapy appointment. suddenly, peter saw red, the fury at being treated like a problem to deal with tackling him while he was already on the ground and beating him to a pulp, forcing him to land any blows he could to defend himself, even if they were cruel and-
“i know you’re drinking,” peter blurted out, danger in his voice. he may have started to look frail but he could show the world that he was on the war path, even if he couldn’t walk properly most days.
“what?” his aunt replied, whipping her head around and staring at him with wide eyes behind her glasses. her eyes were red rimmed.
“i know you drink in the mornings sometimes before making me breakfast because you can’t deal with the fact that this… whatever it is, is my life now,” peter carried on, his voice rising every second as his fists clenched in his lap and he refused to make eye contact with may. “i’ve accepted that this is going to kill me, so why can’t you? oh, maybe you can’t face another death in the family?” peter hazarded a look over at his aunt. she was trembling like a leaf in the wind, unnerved and borderline frightened at how aggressive peter was becoming. she was frozen on the spot, all of the secrets she’d tried to keep over the past month and a half being exposed like nerves after a limb was crushed.
“maybe you can’t handle another death in the family, but i’ve been alone for so much longer than you have. trust me, you get used to it eventually,” peter spat, glaring at may as if looks could kill. he gained a sick delight in watching her turn pale and then turn red. she opened her mouth and closed it again. peter got out of the car.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“my name is doctor zelah,” the man said. peter wasn’t sure what the man looked like, because his eyes were either clamped shut or aimed somewhere around the doctor’s feet. peter had known that his reaction to therapy wouldn’t have been ideal but honestly, he’d predicted more of a run right the fuck outta there, dissociate, and shoplift a bunch of food to binge on because he forgot his wallet but he guessed that simply becoming vacant was a valid reaction, too. he didn’t reply to doctor zelah. he’d known his name for more than two months already, and there was no way that the doctor needed to be introduced to him. heaven knew how many conversations this man must’ve had with tony and may about his mental state.“do you want to sit down?” the man asked once it had become clear that peter wasn’t going to speak. his voice was in the mid-range of high and low, but not enough to be alarming in its mediocrity. it was soothing, in a way, to know that he’d eventually be spilling his guts to someone so average. they’d gotten to the room where peter was going to sit and talk about his problems while sat on a couch and starting all his sentences with ‘well, doc…’he shook his head, smiling at his own cynicism. he knew he had to believe that doctor zelah was going to help in order for this whole thing to not be pointless but peter thought he may as well joke about the situation while he could.“is this the first test?” peter croaked, his voice taking on the ‘eighty year old smoker’ quality that it had gained a week before that. he cleared his throat and silently cursed himself for not doing so before he spoke. he knew that he was there to get help so that he could stop throwing up without wanting to violently kill himself over it but letting his voice of all things remind both peter and the doctor of why they were here was almost as bad as this whole chain of events being set off by tony noticing marks on his fucking hand.“what?” the doctor replied, a slight lilt in his tone. it was as if he was trying not to laugh.“last time i was in therapy, they said that i’d become hyper vigilant over my uncle’s death just because i chose the seat closest to the door,” peter said flatly, not caring for the memory. he’d only gone to two therapy sessions after ben died and his eating habits almost destroyed him for the first time. he’d hated both of them.“i’m not your last therapist, peter. this isn’t a test,” doctor zelah replied, a warm undertone in his voice. “now, shall we get started?”-- tony tried not to stare at his watch and count down the seconds until peter was due to be out of his therapy session. doctor zelah was one of the good ones (or so he’d heard) and really, if peter didn’t start gaining weight soon, he really would have to be admitted. where the boy used to be soft and boyish, he was now hard and jagged and everything peter parker shouldn’t be. a statistic about the mortality rates of eating disorders ran through tony’s mind like a glitch and he unsuccessfully suppressed a flinch. he tried to tell himself that peter would not become another meaningless statistic but ended up reminding himself how there seemed to be less and less of peter every day and the teenager didn’t even seem to care- the teenager in question came stumbling out of the building, his shoulders hunched against the world as if he was defending himself and a facial expression so blank that tony did a double take. he knew that recovery wasn’t linear and that getting better didn’t necessarily look the same for everyone but peter looked so much more world weary than he did in the morning, almost as if he’d lay down and die if tony didn’t keep an eye on him. “i don’t want to talk about it,” came the immediate answer to the question that wasn’t even fully formed in tony’s mind yet. the car door slammed closed and peter pulled his seatbelt on with relative difficulty. when tony didn’t immediately start the car, he got the full force of the not in the goddamn mood to accept concern glare that peter sent his way through red rimmed, swollen eyes. it must have been a tough first session, tony thought dumbly. “kid, what are you talking about?” tony tried to ask, as if he wasn’t screaming the words are you okay please be okay i love you so much please eat something and please don’t throw it up at peter from his brain. “therapy. i’m not talking about it. where are we going?” without replying, tony started the car and pulled out of the car park. the outside world blurred and warped behind the window as the car sped down the roads that peter used to know so well. he used to have the motivation to go out as spider-man, to get to know queens through the networks that formed its arteries. now, though, he stared at the suit every evening after eating the grapefruit slices and honey that was his dinner, wishing that he cared enough about the world to try and save it. the grey concrete jungle faded until it was more green than colourless, and peter realised that he didn’t know the paths they were driving down at all. they’d left queens entirely. peter risked a glance over to tony but received nothing in return. when the green of foliage faded into yellow sands, peter finally spoke again. “where, uh, where are we going?” he asked, voice rough as sandpaper. “that’s a surprise. i’ve told may i’m taking you out, though, and i know where we’re going. we’re not just speeding around wherever my huge brain feels like going,” tony replied, trying and failing to inject some semblance of joy into his tone. the joke fell flat but even so, peter tried to huff in laughter. “well, mr stark, are we there yet?” peter asked, impersonating a whining two year old as best as he could. for the first time in what seemed like forever, tony genuinely laughed. “well, yes, we’re here,” tony replied, stopping the car abruptly. sand hurtled out from underneath the suddenly still wheels, and the sea called invitingly to peter. it seemed to sing to him, begging him to take a boat out into the wide, blue void and tie rocks to his ankles and jump out into the nothingness. there wasn’t a single other car or person in sight, and with good reason; the sky looked black and ready to open, and the wind was so harsh that it made them both shiver, even though they were still inside the car. “alrighty, underoos, are you ready for some cathartic release?” the older man asked nervously, trying to gauge peter’s reaction without making him feel surveilled or under pressure to yield to his will. the younger boy rolled his eyes before using all of his weight (not very much, in the grand scheme of things) to haul the door open. peter looked almost fragile among the pale yellow and beige of the sand, wrapped in layers that didn’t shield him from the cold as much as they probably should have and shivering so hard that tony could almost count it as exercise. tony hated it. he hated how frail the boy looked, how much he looked like he’d be blown away in the wind if left alone for much longer, and how ghostly white peter looked. tony hated all of it, but focusing on that would make him miserable and make peter even more anxious around him than he already was, so he forcibly dragged his mind over to the intended purpose of this trip: catharsis. tony stopped in front of a promising pile of rocks. after picking up a decently sized one, he gestured between them and peter, wanting the boy to do the same. “now, pete, this is a tried and tested way of de-stressing à la tony stark,” he began, turning to the sea so he wouldn’t have to hold eye contact with peter. he tossed his rock up in the air with his right hand and caught it with his left. he reeled back and lurched forward, throwing the rock into the churning waves and screaming after it, curling in on himself and looking every bit as anguished as his screams suggested he was. when tony ran out of breath in his lungs, he looked over at peter again, who had a slightly harrowed countenance. the elder smiled and said, “throw the rock into the sea. scream. it’s good for the soul, i promise.” peter looked down at the rock in his own hand, visualising his eating disorder being trapped within it and all of his pain and the childhood he never got to have and- he threw it away. the rock sailed in the air until it collided with the frothy sea, and peter screamed a guttural scream that he felt down to his bones. he cried and wailed and kicked the sand and picked up more rocks simply to throw them back into the sea they came from. the same mindless hell raising instinct that flared up within him whenever he binged and purged was focused into the rocks and the sand and the indifferent sea. when there was no more air left in peter’s lungs, and the pain that he felt so urgently became a dull ache, he looked over to his mentor. his chest heaved and his face bore even more tear tracks than before. peter smiled because now he’d let out the monster that had claimed his body as its home, he could now take back his body for himself. even if the feeling didn’t last, even if peter starved himself the next day, nothing could change the fact that in that moment, his body was his own.