Have a gander at this headcanon!
Soooooo I headcanon Peter Quill aka Star-Lord as having some serious asthma. He normally wears a medical Esonophite* patch that needs replacing once a month. It controls his symptoms and his asthma attacks never proceed past feeling tight and wheezing a little. The catch is he has to put a new patch on ASAP when the old one dissolves, or the asthma issues come up full force. He’s pretty good about taking care of that, although there have been rare instances where he left the box on the Milano by accident and had to deal with the repercussions until he he could slap a new patch on.
His asthma attacks get intense and potentially life-threatening if they’re triggered by respiratory infections or allergies. Sometimes steamy bathrooms after showers can do it too. Even with a patch in place, every cold or flu he gets turns into nasty chunky-cough bronchitis and he’ll need to keep his rescue meds close by in case of a breakthrough asthma attack. His attacks start as tightness with wheezing and coughing that get higher in pitch as his airways shrink to the size of a small drinking straw.
Sometimes an intense asthma attack makes him panic a bit. He’ll often assume the classic tripod posture of sitting and leaning forward with his hands resting beside him on whatever surface he’s sitting on.
His knapsack has a false bottom that hides an alien-looking inhaler that releases a mist if he puffs on it and small self-contained nebulizer canisters that break a stronger medication into smaller particles for easier inhalation during severe attacks, but he rarely needs them. He also carries quick-dissolve lozenges that release oxygen directly into his bloodstream to minimize his “I need to breathe now!” panic while he puts a nebulizer canister together.
Quill sometimes says he never knew what unhindered breathing felt like until he got those Esonophite patches. They changed his life. He had more stamina and became a bit of a terror among the Ravagers because holy shit he could breathe.
Ironically, Quill got his swanky new asthma care stuff from Yondu, who I also headcanon as dealing with asthma issues. Yondu tried Quill’s Albuterol inhaler, choked on it because he didn’t get the whole depress-and-puff part right, and after he stopped coughing he declared it shit. He pretty much slapped a medicine patch on Quill and said not being able to breathe isn’t an excuse to lay on the floor like a pussy. (Cuz Yondu is an asshole.) So he gave Quill the supplies he now carries in case of breakthrough asthma attacks.
Yondu’s attacks are so severe they close his airways down to a pinhole. They start with coughing, then go to tightness and scary high-pitched wheezing. He can tell when one is going to start before it hits because, in his words, “my lungs itch when I cough.” Sometimes the mist rescue inhaler stops it there and sometimes it doesn’t. When attacks progress to total airway obstruction, he has to inject himself with an combo anti-inflammatory/muscle-relaxant/decongestant to make his airway open up the tiny bit necessary to inhale nebulizer medication. Anything that irritates his airway sets asthma attacks off if he doesn’t have an Esonophite patch in place.
He mastered the art of staying calm during his asthma attacks– he’ll sit still and lean forward with his eyes closed and his hands on his knees as if in meditation with the nebulizer mask strapped to his face. The only panic you’ll see is from somebody else witnessing an asthma attack in progress.
The patches control his symptoms a bit better than Quill’s, he never gets so much as tightness unless he takes too long to slap a new patch on. His symptoms return gradually rather than all at once. He can wait about four hours after the old patch wears off and then he’ll start to cough/wheeze and reach for an inhaler.
*Made-up drug name. Esonophite patches control esonophils, a type of white blood cell that increases in number and trigger the inflammation during an asthma attack. There’s also Neutrophite patches for people whose neutrophils go haywire during asthma attacks.
