Irondad Oneshots

may you know that you're loved, even when you're lost

This is chapter 28 (I think) of Whumptober from a little while ago

Tw: Mental Health (mainly focused on dissociation)

*

"You have to tell me what's going on with you, Peter," May's saying, voice far away and echoing.

He's sitting on a couch, their couch, in their apartment. Queens, he reminds himself. His name is Peter Parker. His aunt is worried about him.

He's looking at her, but it's hard to focus on her blurry face, world spinning and colors muddling together. He blinks a few times, wishing he could blink the dark spots out of his vision, but he's learned their permanence.

"Peter?" May tries again.

Right, he thinks, focus. He has to focus.

Pulling at the corners of his mouth with foreign muscles, he twists his face into a polite smile. "I'm okay, May."

His own voice sounds weird and distorted, not right to his ears, a stranger's voice.

And May's face falls into an emotion he couldn't even try to decipher if he wanted to. Her hands touch his knees and he looks down at them, blinking slowly and too numb to feel the kind touch.

"I know you're lying to me," she says, sighing. He can feel her looking at him, but he can't remember how to look up again, eyes trained on her blurry hands. "But I can't make you talk... Just- I'm here for you if you need anything, alright?"

He wants to nod, it seems appropriate to nod, but he can't quite remember which muscles will allow it, so he doesn't.

May pulls her hands away from his knees and she stands up, world distorting around her. "I love you, honey, you know that, right?"

He's staring at her face, trying to make sense of it, trying to convince himself that he looks like that too, trying to convince himself that she's real.

It's hard to believe. Only because he doesn't feel real. And if he's not real, how in world is everything around him real? It's hard to differentiate what's real and what's not. He feels like his body is melting away and his brain is floating into outer space, and-

He forgets that he's not supposed to think about space, it hurts just a little bit too much for his dissociation to handle and the universe tips around him, unsure how to handle the two ends of the spectrum at the same time.

"May?" His tongue feels foreign inside his mouth and his voice sounds like it's underwater.

She turns to him from where she'd given up on him (of course she would, he shouldn't be surprised, everyone's going to give up on him, it's about time) and she offers one of her kind smiles.

"Yeah, honey?"

He likes the sound of her voice, even if it does nothing to stop his body melting into the floor and his brain floating into the ceiling and the panic clawing at his chest.

He hangs onto it like a lifeline.

"Love you too."

*

Static.

Filling his ears and his head and his vision, static.

He's lying in bed. The only thing that exists in his headspace is the ticking on his watch, hand resting over his chest, heart in sync with the ticking.

It could've been any time between noon and 4am, he doesn't know- couldn't know. Time is hard to figure out when his brain is gone and his body is like a heavy, weighted puppet for him to puppeteer.