Chapter Text
The next day is a Friday, but May lets him stay home from school anyway. Peter wakes up a little before ten to a text from Tony, informing him that Happy will be picking him up in half an hour and bringing him to the compound to work on some urgent suit upgrades.
(Peter gets the feeling that it’s actually just to make sure he’s not beating himself up too much.)
(Which he totally is.)
He doesn’t really want to go. His stomach is too messed up that morning to even attempt breakfast and he feels like shit. But May and Tony must have conspired together since she just shoos him out the door with a quick kiss on his forehead and instructions to text her if he’ll be staying the night.
Tony doesn’t talk about yesterday’s mission besides to mention that he followed up with the hospital and Emma is doing fine—she’s got a sweet purple cast that Spider-Man is welcome to stop by and sign later, and she should be getting released tomorrow.
After that, the two fall into the familiar swing of tinkering, sometimes bouncing ideas back and forth or making small talk, and other times just working side by side in companionable silence.
Hunger starts to gnaw at Peter after a while. His mentor is fully engrossed in the project and doesn’t seem to notice how they’re working right into the late afternoon.
On one hand, Peter knows all he has to do is tell Tony he’s hungry and they’ll stop for lunch. But something about the empty feeling inside is pissing Peter off today. Why can’t he just be fucking normal? Why does he have to be this freak who can’t even miss a meal without his body and mind going haywire? He’s so fucking sick of this. So he says nothing.
Another hour passes and Peter is feeling exhausted and floaty. His hands shake slightly as he connects the circuits. It’s not until he hops up from his stool to get a different pair of pliers that Peter realizes he’s fucked up. His head rushes and his world tilts dangerously before the blackness overtakes everything.
X
When Peter comes to again, he’s lying on the lab floor, his now throbbing head resting in his mentor’s lap.
“Peter?” Tony asks, tapping Peter’s cheek. “Hey, you back with me yet?”
Peter groans and starts to push himself up on his elbows, but Tony presses him back down gently.
“Just sit tight, kid,” Tony instructs. “Bruce is on his way.”
“‘M fine,” Peter slurs. “Just got a lil’ dizzy.” He can feel something trickling down the back of his aching skull and lifts his trembling hand to prod at it.
Tony immediately swats the hand away. “Yeah, nope, no touching either,” he says firmly. “You whacked it on the counter pretty good on the way down.”
Great. Peter squeezes his eyes shut and lets out another little moan. He’s so tired.
Bruce arrives about thirty seconds later, carrying a first aid kit and looking a little frazzled. “Hey. FRIDAY told me he fainted?”
Peter starts to say, “I didn’t fai—”
“Like one of those scared goats,” Tony cuts him off as Bruce crouches down to sit next to them on the floor. “Clocked his head too, hence the blood.”
Bruce pops the kit open to pull out some latex exam gloves. “Any other injuries I should know about? Did you get hurt yesterday, besides your shoulder?”
“No, nothing,” Peter mutters. He honestly hadn’t, and the shoulder was completely healed by that morning.
Bruce helps Peter to sit up, leaning him against Tony, and gingerly prods at the lump on the kid’s head. Then he shines a penlight in Peter’s eyes to check his pupils. “Doesn’t seem too bad,” he mutters to Tony. “No concussion, and he shouldn’t need stitches or anything. It’s already clotting.”
“Great,” Tony says. “Now, any idea why he took a swan dive in my lab?”
Bruce raises his eyebrows at his friend. “Knowing you?” he says with a scoff. “I’m guessing you worked him through lunch.”
Tony throws him a look of indignation. “We ate,” he retorts. “We had...” He pauses and glances at Peter. “Shit. FRIDAY, what did we eat today?”
“Nothing, boss,” she tattles.
Bruce snorts out a laugh. “See, this is why they gave me the seven PhDs.”
Tony rolls his eyes. He turns to Peter questioningly. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry, kid?”
Peter’s mouth opens, but no words come out. He closes it again.
“Alright”—Bruce sighs and pushes himself up to standing—“should be an easy fix at least.” He holds out a hand to Peter. “Just have to get some food into him.”
A wave of anxiety crashes over Peter. How is he supposed to explain that this isn’t easy at all? That he couldn’t eat that morning because he’d fucking binged the night before? That he couldn’t ask Tony for food because the chasm had already grown too wide for a normal portion? That eating was dangerous now—that the void would swallow him whole?
He can’t explain it, so he just allows them to hoist him up and guide him out of the lab. Tony nudges him to sit on one of the couches in the living room.
Bruce leaves and returns a minute later carrying a tall glass of orange juice and some crackers with cheese. “Okay, you eat this,” he instructs Peter, setting the plate and glass down on the coffee table. He pulls a protein bar out of his shirt pocket and tosses it to Tony. “And you eat that.”
Tony flips him off, but unwraps the bar anyway.
Still looking at Tony, Bruce continues, “Just let him eat and rest. He should be feeling better in thirty minutes or so, but let me know if he isn’t and we can run some bloodwork.”
“Will do,” Tony agrees. “Thanks.”
Once Bruce leaves, Tony turns to look at the kid. “Alright, you heard the man.” He takes a bite of the bar. “Eat. Drink. Be merry.”
Under Tony’s watchful gaze, Peter starts sipping the juice and nibbling on his crackers.
When half the plate is gone, Tony asks, “Feeling better?”
“Yeah,” Peter lies.
(The chasm screams.)
“Good.” Tony glances down at his watch and then hands Peter the TV remote. “Okay, I’ve got a skype meeting starting in ten minutes with some shareholders in LA that Pepper will have my ass if I miss. You good chilling out here for a bit?”
“Yeah, of course,” Peter assures.
“Alright.” Tony stands up from the couch. “I’ll order dinner for six o’clock—I should be finished by then. Let FRIDAY know if you need anything.”
Tony heads out, and Peter flips on the TV. He settles on a Mythbusters marathon and tries to relax.
After a few minutes, the rest of the plate is gone and he doesn’t feel so sick and tired anymore—just empty. All he can think about is the void inside and how simple it would be to fill it.
Peter looks back over his shoulder and he can see into the kitchen. The temptation is growing. He glances at the clock. It’s a little before five. He tries to tell himself he only needs to last one hour until dinner.
But then the void reminds him that dinner isn’t going to fix this—it’ll just leave him as frustratingly empty and dissatisfied as always. He needs more. He needs… abundance.
All at once, Peter is up and moving to the kitchen. He pulls open the fridge and takes in the spread before him. He stuffs a handful of grapes into his mouth. Then a piece of cheese. Then a meatball. Then some black olives. A piece of cold pizza. Six baby carrots. There’s a box of bran muffins on the counter, and he devours one of those. Next is three spoons of Nutella, a handful of cashews, and a cup of dry granola.
After that, Peter’s mind stops registering what he’s doing—he’s not seeing, not tasting, not feeling. The numbness is everywhere.
Peter doesn’t know how long it goes on. He’s pretty sure he’s not inside of his body anymore.
Finally, through his daze, he registers a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Peter?”
Peter blinks. He suddenly realizes that he’s holding an open tub of butter in his hand.
“Peter?”
There are finger tracks in the butter and an oily, gross feeling on his tongue.
“Peter? Can you hear me?”
He turns slowly.
Tony is standing behind him, a hand on Peter’s shoulder, a shocked look on his face. His tone is more confused than accusatory. “Are… Are you eating butter?”
The numbness shatters. Peter manages to whip his head back around before retching violently onto the ground.
X
Peter is ushered into the bathroom where he continues to vomit into the toilet for another fifteen minutes, choked sobs coming out in between heaves. The void inside is laughing maniacally at him and it’s so, so loud.
Tony hovers nearby, his hand resting on Peter’s back, looking utterly baffled. Twice, he offers to get Bruce, but that only makes Peter cry harder with shame.
Eventually, Peter’s sobs die down and Tony steps out of the bathroom. He comes back a minute later with a new set of clothes for Peter.
“Think you can handle a shower?” Tony asks quietly.
Peter looks down at himself, for the first time realizing his clothes are soaked through with vomit. He nods and Tony steps out of the bathroom to give him some privacy.
Peter stays in the shower for nearly half an hour, just letting the scalding hot water fall over him, willing it to wash him away.
When he finally emerges from the bathroom, Tony is standing just outside, leaning against the wall and scrolling through something on his phone. He glances up at Peter and immediately puts the phone in his pocket.
“Okay,” he says carefully. “Now can you tell me what that was all about?”
Peter’s throat tightens and tears prick at his eyes. His voice comes out thick.
“I… I think I need help.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, something breaks inside of Peter. He falls forward, crashing into his bewildered mentor’s arms as he dissolves into fresh sobs.
X
It takes over an hour, but Peter ends up telling him everything. He tells about how the emptiness consumes him and makes him cold and floaty and miserable; about how he’d stolen fifty dollars to stockpile junk food under his mattress; about how his dizziness caused him to drop Emma; about how eating is simultaneously so enticing, and so repulsing, and so utterly all-consuming.
Tony sits next to Peter on the sofa as he listens, one arm wrapped around the kid’s shoulders. Only when Peter is finished does Tony speak.
“Okay, first off let me just say I’m really glad you told me,” he says seriously. “And you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Because this whole eating thing? It’s hard, Pete. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“But it shouldn’t be,” Peter mumbles, looking down at his lap. “It’s just food.”
“Yeah, but it is hard,” his mentor argues back. “I don’t exactly set the most shining example, and maybe I need to work on that, but honestly, I’m a little appalled at myself for not realizing this would be an issue before now. I mean, with that metabolism of yours, of course you’re gonna have problems.”
“It didn’t used to be so bad,” Peter says. “It’s just like, the void gets louder, you know?”
Tony nods thoughtfully. “What do you say to asking Bruce to run those tests after all? Figure out just how fast your metabolism actually is?”
Peter hesitates. “Would… Would we have to tell him everything?”
“No.” Tony shakes his head firmly. “Only what you’re comfortable with. You’re in charge here, kid—I’m just along for the ride.”
For once, Peter starts feeling some hope.
X
There’s a long road ahead for Peter.
He doesn’t tell Bruce everything, but enough that the scientist gets the picture. By the time they finish the tests, the results are that he has a metabolism just slightly slower than Steve’s—about three-and-a-half to four times that of a non-enhanced adult.
“That’s insane,” Peter says when he gets the report. “That can’t be right.”
Bruce shrugs. “It would definitely explain why normal portions don’t seem to make a dent—I would be feeling pretty ravenous too if I was only eating a quarter of what my body needed.”
The first thing that Tony does is to set up a food fund for Peter and hook him up with a debit card.
Peter naturally tries to protest, but Tony shoots him down.
“Yeah, no, this is an internship perk, buddy—I don’t like my employees taking unexpected swan dives in the lab.” He pauses and huffs out a laugh. “Plus, now you can pick up my Starbucks orders.”
Next, with Peter’s permission, Tony talks to Aunt May and ends up hiring a nutritionist who works with Peter to develop a meal plan that suits his superhuman metabolism. It has him eating smaller, more nutrient dense meals every one to two hours throughout the day.
In the beginning, it’s torture. Every time Peter eats, the void screams at him that these meals are not enough—that he’s empty and always will be. His binges actually increase during the first month, and it’s all Tony and May can do to keep him from abandoning the plan completely.
After the third straight night of Peter sobbing on the bathroom floor, the adults agree that a psychiatric consult is in order.
“Peter, it’s nothing to be ashamed about...” May tries to tell him.
Peter groans in frustration. “For the last time, I don’t have an eating disorder.”
“We’re not saying you do or you don’t,” Tony says simply. “We just think it might be helpful for you to talk to someone who knows more about this.”
Peter’s head is swirling. “But this has never been about what I look like,” he protests. “I’m not trying to be thin.”
“You don’t have to be,” Tony argues. “I’ve been doing some research, kid—anorexia and bulimia aren’t the only two options anymore.”
“Please, just let them evaluate you,” May pleads. “I hate seeing you like this. I just want you to feel better.”
X
Therapy helps somewhat. With practice, Peter learns strategies to help him recognize when the emptiness is hunger and when it’s not. It’s hard and it’s messy, but he keeps trying.
Several weeks into his treatment, FRIDAY’s voice breaks into the darkness of the compound’s kitchen. “Peter, you appear to be in distress. Do you require assistance?”
Peter blinks. He’s sitting on the floor in front of the open freezer, his painfully cold fingers jabbed into a container of ice cream. Melted chocolate is running down his chin. Numbness is everywhere. He fucking did it again.
Evidence of his binge is spread across the countertops, crumbs on the floor. He feels sick and ashamed and disgusting.
The void screams at him to hide.
He takes in a long, shuddery inhale. “Can… Can you get Mr. Stark?”
There’s a brief pause. “Boss is on his way,” FRIDAY reports. “He’s so proud of you, Peter.”
X
It’s a long road, but slowly, gradually, Peter’s body starts learning to trust him again. That food is coming. That the emptiness is not forever. That people in his life love him no matter what.
The chasm doesn’t swallow him whole anymore.