Kid, tell me what happened: The Sequel

I need somebody to heal (somebody to love)

Peter cries, though no one can see him. It’s a raw urge, pleading for someone to listen to him, hear him, and save him from himself. But there’s no one there. The teenager has no friends, and his parents Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are too busy to soothe his dire need for relief. 

He wants to be noticed, heard, and acknowledged. He wants someone he knows he can trust to let him sob in their arms and tell him that he’s going to be okay. Because he’s not. He has so much anxiety and he can’t possibly contain it. Except he is and has, and it’s bubbling inside him, shearing his cells and begging to be heard. Peter forces it down because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

It’s a tick inside him, a growing decay screaming at him in his face, “What is so wrong with you?” The tick then sputters, “Everything” over and over again. He just wants to scream and claw it out but it can’t, it lives within him like a venomous parasite capable of death, destruction, and ruin. 

It’s become a part of him, slowly consuming him whole. He’s tired and all drained all the time, but when his head hits the pillow he can barely fall asleep. Smiling and laughing became a conscious thing, where Peter has to force smiles that feel so inhumanely wrong just so the kids at school don’t think he’s an even bigger freak than he already is. Sometimes Peter forgets, but the anxiety snakes it’s way back into him during meals, adamant to keep the Stark-Rogers drowning in his prison of a mind. 

Except Peter’s not drowning, His head is being by some invisible force and he can’t breathe. He’s slowly losing the light, his light as the days blend together into nothingness. He’s suffering. Quietly, the teenager thinks that he’s not drowning, instead, he’s dying. 

Day by day, his chest becomes tighter and tighter. He doesn’t smile or laugh, even when his papa cracks a tired joke. It’s just a constant deja vu that he’s caught in over and over in the same unbearable damn sequence. 

Peter can barely eat, and as of today, he’s lost five pounds. His dads don’t notice but it’s not their fault. With everything going on, they can barely take care of themselves, let alone acknowledge their true environment. They’re still there to wake him up, feed him, hold and take care of him, but there’s no exact connection. They just exist in their separate worlds; their world and his. Besides, his fathers trust him to seek refuge in them on his own. Peter is just as guilty as his parents, but he doesn’t have the heart to make his dads worry even more. They have the world on their shoulders already, they don’t need any more weight. 

But it is so goddamn hard to not break down in front of them at any given moment. To just dive into their hold and cry about the aches in his heart. To be cuddled and kissed and promised that together the three of them would get through this together. So instead, Peter cries behind closed doors and hunched backs thinking and knowing that there are so many things wrong with him. 

He just wants to feel human again. Was that so much to ask for?

Little by little, the anxiety stirs. It gets worse and worse to the point where Peter is shaking all over and he feels like he’s going to pass out. He’s not sure if he did or not, he only remembers getting sent home and his school’s nurse telling him to get some sleep. 

So the teenager drags himself all the way back home to the Avengers Tower, quietly shuffling around because the Stark-Rogers doesn’t have the strength nor the energy to make a sound. He feels sick and he sways, unable to control the raging inferno within him. He needs his dads now. 

Peter quietly opens his parent’s bedroom door, unsure if anyone else is home or not. Both of them are sound asleep. Steve is still in his stained uniform and socks while Tony is strewn across the bed still in his suit’s underclothes. Heavy bags decorate the pair’s eyes as stubble formed south. His parents look utterly exhausted and quite frankly, they are. 

Feeling disappointed, Peter quietly shut the door as he silently returned back to his room. His mind is hollow and tired as he thinks, maybe another day. 

A/N: Hey my dudessss. I wrote this last week during an anxiety attack during the earlier parts of quarantine, hence why it's shorter than most of my other fics. Whenever I get into those anxiety moods, I just tend to write to get my feelings worked out, and I write shorter, more concise thoughts which I hope that you guys don't mind. I also remember you guys saying that you liked it. Also, could you guys vote on the last few oneshots, my reads have been going down lately and idk why but stay safe y'all.