THE GRAND DELUSION [ PETER PARKER ]

parker - 00

{peter}

    May Parker finds her nephew crying.

    It's four thirty in the morning -- around the time she normally wakes up to start getting ready for work --, but on her way to the bathroom, she hears something. A choked sound, and then a tight whimper. Moving quickly, May enters the bedroom of her nephew Peter and finds him crying. His trembling hands are clamped tightly over his ears, squeezing his head painfully between his flushed palms. He pressed his face into his pillow. He's crying, a strangled sound caught in his throat that shatters Aunt May's heart in the same way it did when he was just a little boy.

    "Oh, Peter," she says softly, reaching for the switch that would bring some light into the room. She's horrified, however, when the brightened room has her nephew rolling off of his bed and slamming into the hardwood floor. He lets out a mangled cry, a 'no' tearing its way out of his hoarse throat in protest. He buries his face against the floor, thudding his forehead methodically against the ground in a desperate attempt to distract himself; focus in on the pain. May quickly shuts the light back off, panicked, before rushing towards the boy crying on his bedroom floor. She doesn't miss the way he writhes with every tap of her bare feet against the floor."Peter, baby," she whispers, reaching to press a soothing hand to his back, but he wrenches out of her grasp as if her fingertips burned.

    "Please, don't." Peter manages in a breathless whisper, just barely turning his face to glance at her. He squeezes his eyes shut, visibly in pain. And that's when May notices the small trail of blood leaking from his nose, the dark red liquid staining his upper lip. "Please," his voice is weak and pleading, the whole picture of the teenager so absolutely devastating.

    "Okay, Peter, okay." She nods, heart thudding and hands shaking. She cups a hand over her mouth momentarily, scared and confused. "Peter, baby, you need to tell me what's happening. Please, I want to help you."

    "Too loud," he whimpers, his voice breaking along with his aunt's heart. "It's too loud.... Hurts."

    "My voice?" May says at a whisper, suddenly conscious of her tone.

    "Everything... Too much." May nods as if she could possibly understand what was happening to her nephew. She remembers checking in on him before heading to bed earlier that night, and he was peacefully asleep in bed by eleven pm. What was it that caused such a dramatic change?

    "Is my voice too much?" She tries again carefully, and he nods slowly against the floor. "Okay, what do you want me to do for you, Peter?" She wants to hug him, cradle the teen in her arms like he was a child again; keep him safe from the world and the tragedies that seem to follow him. But he seems to be sensitive to everything right now, and the thought of putting Peter through more pain made her stop.

    "Just stay," Peter's lips quiver as he speaks, and then he's opening his eyes to a squint so he can focus on his aunt's concerned face. Pain explodes behind his eyes, the thrumming spreading to all corners of his skull. He resists the urge to smash his head into the floor again. "Please." He says breathlessly.

    "Alright, baby," she says, thoughts of her work and his schooling escaping her. She would stay here, drying his tears and comforting him through whatever sort of panic attack he seemed to be going through, just until she could drag him to the emergency room and get him checked out. Because it was just them two — just Peter and May Parker —, and they were all they had left.

    That was the first time Peter Parker had an episode. May never forgot about it, no matter how hard he tried to convince her that he was okay and that it was just a really bad panic attack— a one-time thing. So Peter never let her see another one. He'd lied and said the nosebleed was because he'd hit his face against his nightstand when waking up. How could he tell her that it was from his brain practically having a meltdown all because a plane passed overhead? Because suddenly he could hear the car alarms ringing four streets over, the thumping of music from the apartment block across the street, and the voices of a couple fighting three floors down? It was best to keep everything from her— the bite, the powers, and the heightened senses that came with it.

    Because Peter Parker was normal before, his normal aunt's normal nephew, and he was determined to stay that way.

—
a/n;
hi! longtime no see!
though this is a peter parker fic, this story will have a fully developed plot and delve on topics and plot points alongside the main relationship.
regular chapters will average 2k words.
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