Spiderman One Shots

I'm Nothing Without This Suit

TRIGGER WARNING!! MENTIONS OF SELF HARM WITH THOUGHTS OF SUICIDE!!

Tony remembered the exact moment that May Parker had called him. He never received calls from her and was unable to control the worry for Peter that was building in him at whatever news she held. Had Peter not come home after his trip to the Compound? Was he deathly sick from some kind of poisoning? Maybe some criminal found him and was holding them hostage?

When he answered the call, he had barely uttered a greeting before May started yelling at him. He couldn't understand most of what she was saying, but he was able to pull the keywords 'Spiderman', 'suit', and 'how dare you' from her ranting. Putting those pieces of information together, it was easy to say that May found out about her Nephew galavanting across the city in red and blue tights.

May seemed to hold Tony personally responsible for Peter's... side job, and wouldn't be placated for any promise that Tony tried to give. She demanded to meet with him and have him explain it all to her, every little detail that she wanted to know. Who was Tony to deny her? She was like a hurricane, a true force of nature that should not be tried.

When they met up at the cafe, May had calmed down slightly. Not really. But she wasn't screaming anymore and had stopped threatening his life, which Tony took as an improvement. He had made sure they were completely alone at the back of the cafe before he laid out his blueprints for Spiderman's suit, and all the safety protocols that were strictly enforced. He told her what had happened when he tried to stop Peter from being Spiderman by taking his suit away, he told her that Peter wouldn't stop being Spiderman no matter what anyone told him; May seemed to realize it as well as she silently cursed her husband and the Avengers for putting such a sense of heroism in the boy.

As the two of them talked it out, May demanded weekly updates on Peter. She knew that the boy wouldn't tell her everything that happened to him while he was gliding across the city, and that Tony had all the readings to his suit to tell him if anything ever went wrong. So they both agreed to meet at the cafe every week and share stories about each side of Peter's lives.

One such time, Tony noticed that May was acting differently than normal. Her smile didn't meet her eyes, she didn't keep eye contact for long, and she ordered a simple coffee without any kind of food to go with it. She barely batted an eye when Tony told her how Peter stopped an armed robbery, her mind deep in thought.

"You know," May finally started, staring into her coffee with a faraway gaze, "I hate that Peter is running around the city and putting himself in danger, but I'm glad that it's healing him."

Tony raised a curious eyebrow at the woman and tilted his head slightly. "Healing him how?"

"You didn't know?" She almost sounded shocked, as if it was the most obvious thing. Tony simply shook his head at her, not bothering to speak her confirmation out loud.

"Peter used to suffer from depression, borderline suicidal."

The new information was like a bucket of ice being poured on him, his eyes widening and mouth opening slightly in shock. Peter -- his Peter -- was suicidal? There was no way.

"I had had a feeling that something was wrong," May started to explain, "but could never prove anything. My boy is too good an actor... But one night I came home early to find him in the bathroom with a razor to his wrist." May's eyes took on a haunted look as she recalled the night. "There was so much blood, I was worried that he cut the artery and was going to bleed out on my bathroom floor... I tried taking him to the hospital but he outright refused me, and I couldn't drag him out of that apartment no matter how hard I tried. He was a scrawny little thing, but he was strong when he needed to be. So I patched him up as best as I could, trying to talk about it with him but he shut me out that night. It was like... it was like he wasn't my Peter when we would talk about that."