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hale-13 · 3 years

Text

Ulcerated

By Hale13

For the Summer of Whump Day 8 - Force Feeding

It’s only been a week since Tony last saw the kid but the weight he’s lost is clear in the way his shirt is just a little baggier than normal, the paleness of his face, the gauntness of his cheeks and Tony has to hold in his sympathetic wince. May Parker was never one to exaggerate but Tony had kind of been hoping that she was this time.

Words: 2720, Chapters: 1/1 (Completed), Language: English

Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)

Rating: Gen

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & May Parker

Characters: Peter Parker, May Parker, Tony Stark, Helen Cho

TW: Vomiting, Medical Procedures

Read on AO3 or below the line break.

“Hey Pete,” he says, trying to keep his tone light and his voice gentle, Peter looks like he’s one stiff breeze from passing out or crying – it’s a toss up – and Tony doesn’t want to find out which is more likely. Peter raises one hand just above waist level in a half-assed wave and Tony bites the inside of his cheek sharply. “May said you’d been feeling pretty crummy kiddo.”

Peter shrugs and hums noncommittally, eyes a little unfocused from, what Tony guesses is, low blood sugar. He purses his lips and weighs his options before crossing the room to pull Peter into a careful hug. Peter goes nearly boneless in his arms but doesn’t raise his own to return the embrace which worries Tony even more; Peter is more tactile than just about anyone Tony’s ever met and is always eager for any physical affection. His stomach turns and he looks up to make eye contact with May where she’s wringing her hands in stress and looking guilty in her navy scrubs.

“Thanks for this Tony,” she says, approaching them and running her fingers through the rat’s nest of Peter’s curls. He’s still leaning up against Tony either for emotional or physical support, he’s not sure which. “I was worried about leaving him alone.”

“It’s no problem at all,” he assured and it wasn’t. When May had first called him about Peter’s supposed stomach flu earlier in the week he had sent all of the kid’s medical information to Cho who had told them, based on his symptoms and history, that they just needed to fill him up with as many fluids as possible and start a bland diet. They couldn’t afford not to with Peter’s wicked fast metabolism. May had taken most of the week off work to cram electrolytes and soup down Peter’s throat but her PTO had run out and she was on shift for the next three days. When she had called Tony for their daily update he had insisted that Peter come stay with him in the Tower – the penthouse a convenient few floors above the MedBay if they needed it.

“Okay Petey,” May said, pulling Peter into her own arms to fold him into a soft hug that Peter at least attempted to return. “You get some rest and try to eat something for Tony okay? I’ll call you in the morning when I get home but I’ll have my phone on if you need me and the hospital can always page me if I’m not able to answer okay?”

“Sure,” Peter rasped and Tony winced at how rough his voice sounded but, he supposed, non-stop vomiting for the majority of the week would do that to you.

“Alright,” May said, looking torn and a little devastated and Tony empathized. Peter was the closest thing he had to a son and he couldn’t imagine leaving him like this now that they were together. She made eye contact with him and Tony could read the clear ‘you’re going to have to take him from me or I won’t let go’ expression on her face and pulled Peter gently back to him.

“I’ve got him May,” Tony promised. “The chefs at the Tower have prepared a ton of bland foods for us to try and Cho’s on call if we need her. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“I know,” she said, eyes a little damp. She cleared her throat and pressed her lips to Peter’s forehead. “I love you Pete.”

“Love you too,” Peter mumbled back and Tony slipped his arm a little lower down the kid’s back to support him when he swayed a little unsteadily, dazed. He needed to get Peter off his feet fast before he passed out. They rode down the janky elevator together but went their separate ways at the curb – May toward the subway and Tony maneuvering Peter to lay half in his lap in the back seat of the town car Happy had been idling in the fire lane in front of the apartment.

“Step on it Hap,” Tony said once he had Peter settled, ignoring the concerned look his friend was giving them both in the rear view mirror. “Make it a smooth ride yeah?”

“No problem Boss,” Happy promised, pulling away from the curb with the utmost care and merging them into the Queens traffic.

——————————————

“I know you don’t want to,” Tony began, apologetic as he nearly shoved a bite of unsalted, unbuttered white rice into Peter’s unwilling mouth, trying not to feel overly guilty about the look of pure betrayal on Peter’s face. “But you’ve already lost over eight pounds and its hard enough to keep up with your metabolism as it is. I know you don’t want to end up in the MedBay.”

Peter sighed around the mouthful of rice but chewed it and swallowed it, begrudgingly accepting the next bite Tony forced into his mouth. They got through about half the bowl before Peter abruptly turned pale and then green, barely managing to grab the empty bucket Tony had placed next to him, vomiting up a mixture of bile and undigested rice. Tony squeezed his eyes shut a second in commiseration before rubbing the kid’s back to help him through it. “It was a good attempt buddy,” he said quietly as Peter retched painfully into the bucket until he was dry heaving only.

The episode only lasted for a couple minutes but Peter looked completely exhausted when he collapsed back to rest against the headboard of his bed, letting Tony pull the bucket from his limp grasp. “No thanks,” he said, voice sounding even worse now, throatier and deeper than normal with the wear and tear on his vocal cords, and pushing away the bottle of Pedialyte Tony had tried to force into his hand.

“Not optional kiddo,” Tony told him sympathetically, pressing the straw between Peter’s unwilling lips and staring until he finally gave in and took a few swallows, his Adam’s apple spasming.

“Can I just sleep?” He asked pathetically, eyes red rimmed and skin both pale and flushed, skin drooping with how tired he clearly was.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Tony offered. “You eat another five bites and drink a quarter of the Pedialyte and I’ll let you have a four hour nap before we repeat. Do we have an accord?”

Peter looked at him with sad eyes, the bags under them dark and deep. “I don’t really get a choice huh?”

“Not if you want to avoid the MedBay,” Tony agreed. “The only reason I haven’t taken you already is because you asked me not to but, if this gets any worse, you’ll have to go.”

“Give me the rice,” Peter said, defeated and Tony passed it to his shaking grip, steadying the bowl while Peter forced down five bites of the rice, washing it down with the drink before lying back and cuddling up to Tony’s side, eyes already half-lidded with sleep.

“Put on some Brooklyn 99 would you FRI? Volume at twenty percent.”

“On it Boss,” FRIDAY’s voice responded quietly, pulling the show up on the flat screen in Peter’s room as Tony started massaging Peter’s scalp.

At some point he must have fallen asleep as well because, the next thing he knew, he was waking up to Peter gagging out his name and lurching for the trash can next to the bed. Tony hastened to grab it and thrust it under Peter’s chin – just in time for the poor kid to retch weakly into it. “Let it all out Webs,” Tony said, rubbing Peter’s sweaty back and brushing his lank bangs out of his face. It wasn’t until Peter was done and panting against Tony’s chest that Tony noticed that the bucket contained a concerning amount of blood and material that looked like coffee grounds. “FRI tell Cho to meet me in the MedBay.”

“No,” Peter whined, curling closer to Tony and tucking his legs into his stomach – balling himself up tight.

“Sorry buddy,” Tony told him, crawling out of the bed as carefully as possible to not jostle Peter too much. “You’re vomiting blood so we have to.”

“What?” Peter asked, confused, craning his neck to look into the trash can and then paling further. “Oh.”

“Yep,” Tony agreed, dragging him up to stand before finally just scooping Peter up into a bridal carry when it became obvious that Peter’s knees weren’t going to support him the whole way downstairs. Tellingly, Peter didn’t protest; he just curled into Tony’s shoulder, one hand tangling into his sweatshirt.

Helen wasn’t present when Tony burst into the MedBay a few minutes later but her nursing staff were quick to get Peter settled into a bed and get his vitals and an updated history from Tony. By the time Helen had swept into the room, looking put together and not at all like Tony had woken her up in the middle on the night, the nurses had already drawn blood and placed an IV catheter to start fluids.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t be seeing you in here Peter,” she said, taking his chart and flicking through it.

“Same,” the kid agreed with a weak smile, not letting go of Tony’s hand or the basin he had been given shortly after they got him in a bed.

“So you still have the nausea but it says here that you been having some issues with acid reflux and that you had a fair bit of blood mixed with the bile you just threw up?” She asked, using her stethoscope to listen to Peter’s heart and lungs before moving on to feeling his lymph nodes. “How much blood?” She directed to Tony.

“All of it was blood,” Tony answered, trying to stay calm. He needed to text May ASAP but he was hesitant to do so until he knew what was wrong. “Maybe half a cup? Some of it looked like coffee grounds.”

Helen hummed as she moved on to palpating Peter’s abdomen, apologizing when he flinched. “Have you been on any medications recently Peter? Aspirin, Advil, Aleve? Any stress?”

“Midterms were last week,” Peter answered slowly. “I had a pretty bad headache the whole week and I did take some Advil a few times a day.”

“How much and how often?”

“Uh…,” Peter said, face scrunching as he tried to think. “Maybe like eight to ten pills three or four times a day? I’ve done that before though, Dr. Banner told me I would need that many because of my metabolism.”

“Very true,” Helen agreed. “But not that often. Based on your symptoms and history I’m tentatively diagnosing you with a stomach ulcer that has likely perforated based on the blood in your vomit.”

“An ulcer?” Peter asked, looking like he was having a hard time tracking, Tony gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“So what do we do next?” He asked, running his hand through Peter’s hair quickly in solidarity. An ulcer. Of course his kid would end up with a bleeding ulcer.

“Well we’ve already drawn blood to check for infection or anemia,” Cho answered. “Depending on the results I’ll start him on fluids and maybe a blood transfusion. Since this has been affecting him for a while and because we need to get some calories in his as soon as we can, I’ll stop the bleed and remove the ulcer via an endoscopy. You won’t even have to be fully under for it, just sedated.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed blandly – a sure tell that the kid felt like shit. Cho made steady eye contact with Tony for just a second before reaching out to squeeze Peter’s bicep.

“Tony can I speak to you in the hall? I need to get you to sign some releases while the nurses get Peter prepped,” she asked.

“Sure,” Tony nodded, giving Peter a careful side hug before following the doctor out of the room, shutting the door behind him – all the rooms were soundproofed due to all the enhanced humans in the Tower and their sensitive hearing. “You were clearly holding something back,” he accused. “You’re lucky Pete’s so out of it or he would have picked up on it too.”

Helen sighed deeply, finally looking tired. “He’s lost too much weight.”

“I know,” Tony agreed sadly, reaching up to massage his temples with one hand. “What are we going to do about it?”

Helen clicked her tongue and tapped a finger against the tablet in her hands. “He’ll probably be able to eat once her wakes up but I really just want to place an NG tube while he’s under so he can have a continuous stream of nutrients going in. We could even continue feeding him while he’s sleeping, really get the weight back on. I wanted to talk to you first before I brought it up. He’s on the cusp right now so he could get away without having it but I don’t really want to give him the option to decline it. It would help him recover a lot faster.”

Tony hummed, torn. He didn’t really want to take away Peter’s agency here but he agreed with Helen that he doubted the kid would go for it. “Let me talk to him about it,” Tony finally conceded. “I might be able to get further with him.”

“Sure,” Helen said with a nod. “You should be good to go back in and sit with him, it’ll take another thirty minutes to an hour to get everything ready but we’ll let you know when it’s time.”

“Thanks,” Tony said sincerely, re-entering the room. Peter was still sitting propped up in bed in his comfortable sweatpants and hoodie, not having to change since the procedure was so simple, but with the addition of another IV catheter in his other arm connected to a bag of his own blood – donated earlier in the year for occasions such as this.

“So what did Dr. Cho want,” he asked, eyes still tired but shining with his usual intelligence and a bit of curiosity.

“Figured we wouldn’t be able to get that past you,” Tony said sardonically, taking a seat on the edge of Peter’s bed, facing him. “Helen wants to place an NG tube while you’re under. Wait,” he said, holding up a hand preemptively when Peter opened his mouth. “You’ve lost too much weight as it is and it’s going to be hard to put it back on with the bland diet she’s going to have you on while you heal. Doing this will make your recovery go so much faster.”

“I don’t want to be stuck in here,” Peter grumbled, gesturing the the room and Tony let one side of his mouth tick up in a smile.

“Hate to break it to you kiddo,” he said, “but that’s already a forgone conclusion.” The kid groaned and Tony let a full smile pull across his face, many of his previous worries eased with the diagnosis and treatment plan. “Let Cho do this and I’ll pull as many strings as I have to to spring you early. Deal?”

Peter made a face, his nose crinkled in disgust but he nodded in defeat anyway. “Two days. At most.”

“Three,” Tony haggled, holding out a hand which Peter eventually took with a sigh. “Great! FRI, relay that to Helen please.”

“Done Boss. She said she’ll be ready for Peter in about ten minutes.”

“Thanks honey,” he said, still smiling. “I’ll call May while you’re out and have Happy pick her up after her shift. She can stay here for the next few days.”

“Thanks Mr. Stark,” Peter said, his voice still sounding more destroyed than Tony had ever heard it but lighter somehow – probably because he could see the light at the end of the tunnel and knew he would be feeling much better soon.

“Anytime kiddo. Anytime.”

#summerofwhump #summerofwhump8 #Prompt: Force Feeding #irondad #spider man #Summer of Whump

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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I know you dont watch GoT anymore. And that Braime and Sansa are your favorites. But I know you've read the books and are obviously really interested in the story. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the whole Jon killing Dany thing? Is that something you can see happening in the books? And if it is do you think it'd be in the same context as the show did it?

Ahaha, welp. Just jumping right in there.

(Also, you never have to apologise for asking GOT/ASOIAF questions. I obviously have been a fan for 16 years and wrote fuckin’ TNR with its half-million-plus words, so I clearly do have Thoughts on the story/characters, especially with the bag of lukewarm cat vomit that was s8 of the show.)

I already answered this ask discussing how much I hated the Mad Queen Dany thing, both because a) it was horrifically badly handled and b) these mediocre misogynist douchegobblers have managed to outdo themselves in terms of the gross messages they’ve sent about women, after 8 seasons of that. (These are the same people who made Sansa say that she was grateful for her rapes and who claimed that Dany’s turn into madness was foreshadowed by her having a “chilly” reaction to the death of her abuser, Viserys, in s1, so…. make of that what you will.) I’m not saying that it was narratively impossible, especially since GRRM has been toying with the same thing in the books and has more than his own share of Male Author Syndrome. But at the start of 8x04, Dany is in Winterfell, perfectly sane, toasting Arya as hero of the battle. By the end of 8x06, she’s crazy, a war criminal, and dead, murdered by her boyfriend, because… well, something something plot reasons. Even if you didn’t like Dany or were rooting for her to go mad or whatever, that was wildly badly handled.

I personally think it would be pretty gross for GRRM to also go down the Mad Queen route, though at least if he does, we will have had Dany’s POV chapters beforehand and presumably something resembling a justification and a building narrative momentum toward it. But she also got stuck in Meereen for so long because by his own admission he didn’t know what to do with her there or how to get her out of the situation and moved onto Westeros, which remains, theoretically, her outstanding goal in the books. It would obviously not be outside the realm of possibility for this to happen, given GRRM’s focus on “grittiness” that the show took to max factor 5000. I would still find it reductive and trying to make a Clever Postmodern Point and etc if it happened in the books, because literally why invest us in a character this long, especially one who has tried so hard to overcome the circumstances of her past/to not be her father, and then just do exactly that? Obviously there would be elements of Shakespearean tragedy to it, and if done well it could be compelling, but I personally just have a different approach to fiction and what people want out of a story (especially one now as famous as GOT/ASOIAF and how universally betrayed everyone seems to feel by the ending). I’m not saying Dany’s ultimate ending needs to be sunshine and roses and getting what she wants, because often character arcs and resolutions become all the more powerful for being subverted and thwarted (think the “I said I wanted [x] but [y] was there instead” sort of endings). But whatever it is, it needs to be…. not that.

Also, Jon in both books and especially show has been the epitome of Mediocre White Man. I stopped watching in s4, but Kit Harington’s acting was so wooden and the writing for him was very much Standard Misunderstood Brooding Fantasy Hero that I could barely pay attention to his scenes. I find him somewhat more interesting in the books, though ADWD dragged for everyone and it was obvious GRRM was writing in circles. But everyone has noticed that especially in the show, Jon does absolutely bupkis. His ass is constantly saved by the women in his life, he makes an absolute hash of any power that he is given and doesn’t want it anyway, and his ultimate ending was…. going back to the Night’s Watch (as their idea of satisfying narrative storytelling is to literally put everyone back where they were in the very first episode, apparently). Never mind the fact that there’s no need for the Night’s Watch, but the point is, even the fact that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son ended up being relevant for like half an episode. That has been one of the major plot points/secrets of the books (although not so much anymore) and it just…. fizzled out like a damp squib. Dany actually TRIED for multiple seasons to be a good ruler and to learn how to handle power and become a queen, so for her to have to be the one to die for Jon to once again do diddlysquat is… well, as I have said before, the misogyny leaps out. They ended up wasting so much potential and so many other things that were also foreshadowed (and far more convincingly than “wah wah she was gonna go evil!”). For this? So Jon can just go brood in the snow again? Cool.

Not to mention, I find it gross on principle that Dany’s boyfriend had to be the one to kill her, especially after rape/sexual violence/loss of agency was such a big part of her early-season storylines (and how horrifyingly and grossly that has been handled on the show overall). We’re obviously supposed to sympathize with Jon in this scenario and to feel that it is justified to “stop a tyrant” or whatever. Also, if the episode was going to be called “Queenslayer,” why the fuck wasn’t it Jaime fulfilling the valonqar prophecy, another thing they forgot about, and killing Cersei, at great personal grief/cost, to once more stop an insane monarch from burning down King’s Landing? But that, of course, would be actual character development/overall arc, and they preferred to also trash that by having Jaime “killed Aerys Targaryen literally to save half a million innocent people and lived with his reputation being destroyed ever after” Lannister unironically claim that he never cared about the lives of the innocent and only wanted Cersei. After she again tried to kill him and Tyrion like three days ago, not even to mention what they did to Brienne and with that whole arc, but I will have a ragestroke if I think about it too much.

Basically, the ending wasn’t “bittersweet.” It was tragic, reductionist, ham-handed, hugely disappointing for everyone who put years of investment into these characters, and ended up in the amusing position of making Bran Stark the younger and more beautiful queen who comes to cast Cersei down. He became king because… reasons? Whatever? And he knows literally everything about everyone thanks to being the Three-Eyed Raven, so there’s no way that can go horribly wrong. He has basically done nothing except sit in a wheelchair and look creepy for several years now, his arc has never been remotely about being king, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright himself is apparently on record as saying he genuinely thought it was a joke script when he read it. This after both Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington broke down over learning what happened to their characters/Kit apparently realized it for the first time at the read-through and was horrified. Emilia already talked about wandering for five hours and having a crisis and calling her mom and asking to be talked off the ledge like….. fictional choices/characters completely aside, that’s a gross thing to do to your actors. I know they’re all proud of their work and they have apparently and understandably been defensive about the existence of the petition to rewrite s8, but they’ve all been pretty clear, while still being professional and supportive, that there is stuff that they’re just as much WTF about as we are.

Basically, as everyone keeps saying, the acting, cinematography, visual effects, music, etc was clearly up to as high a standard as ever, but was betrayed fundamentally and comprehensively by this god-awfully shit writing by a couple of hacks who clearly rushed the final season to get on to ruining working on Star Wars. They have also been on record about saying “you can’t do what the audience expects or it’ll get boring blah blah blah,” which is a profoundly flawed storytelling strategy if you’re paranoid and trying to outsmart your audience and do something that nobody has ever thought of because you’re an Intellectual Postmodern Commentator On Our Violent Society. If your audience can guess where a story is going, but are still surprised by major twists along the way that then make sense in hindsight, you’ve done your job. If you’re relying on grimdark and cramming in gimmicky plot twists and deus ex machinas and Shocking Moments rather than authentically developing your story, it’s going to bite you in the ass in a big way, as was just proven.

Nobody expected a completely happy ending from GoT. But the fact that they went to such lengths, especially in s8, to build up characters/ships (Jonerys, Braime, Gendrya were all torched after major canon moments completely unexpected by fans, especially the latter two – why even include it unless to just be more Tragique, and Gendrya is the only one that has even a chance in the future since half of it didn’t end up idiotically dead) and then just wrecked all of it…. as I’ve said, good endings don’t need to be rainbows and unicorns and kittens. But if you’ve asked eight years of audience investment, there has to be something that makes it worth it and that doesn’t make everyone feel like they were duped and stupid to get involved in the first place. They have been beating the “it’s a hard world and bad things happen to the characters” drum for all they’re worth, but… it’s just bad. You can analyse and ask why the hell they did things and so forth, but it’s bad. At this rate, the show should have either ended after 8x03, or they should have taken the money HBO offered and done the proper 10 episodes and let Bryan Cogman write all of them. He was the only one who appeared to remotely give a shit about the characters, and since D&D wrote the last four episodes themselves, yeah, this disaster is on them.

Fortunately, I left the show years ago and have TNR and am used to ignoring their version of things. And I knew all along that they never really got the characters or the story. But I feel really bad for everyone who has had this thrown back in their face, and it seems like a communal disenchantment with this ending is going to enter the pop-culture consciousness on a possibly unprecedented level. So if GRRM does do the Mad Queen Dany killed by Jon in the books (though he has apparently called the show’s ending “traumatic”), I’ll probably still not like it. He has a chance to sell me it on/justify it to me narratively, which the show categorically failed to do. I don’t think I will, just because as I said, I don’t like anything about it, but yes.

Anyway. This is a long post already, and I probably have more to say still, but it’s pretty obvious I think it’s just really, really bad, and that’s about the essence of it.

#got #got spoilers #got critical #anonymous #ask

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