Work Text:
Penny sighed as the pain in her mouth started back up. She tried to ignore it and focus on the coding she was supposed to be working on, but wow it was really hitting her hard this time around.
She poked around a little with her tongue, trying to find the offending tooth. She pressed against one of her adult ones at the back and the pain immediately spiked, making her wince quietly and screw her eyes shut as she waited for it to pass.
“Pen? You okay?” Mr. Stark asked from across the lab and she glanced up, seeing his slightly worried expression.
“Yeah! I’m fine, sorry,” she said quickly, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. He hesitated, eyeing her suspiciously for a moment before nodding and looking back down at his work. Penny sighed.
Her tooth had started hurting maybe a week ago, roughly. I mean it’s not like she documented this stuff. She’d tried all the painkillers she had available, but her fantastic spidey metabolism made it impossible for them to bring her any relief.
Talk about annoying.
She’d considered telling May and asking to go see a dentist, but she was sure it would pass and the cost of the appointment would probably be ridiculous…
Yeah.
That’s what bothered her.
Definitely not the general idea of a dentist.
She just isn’t a fan of someone poking around in her mouth, can you really blame her?
So now she was stuck with an aching tooth in Mr. Stark’s lab. It was especially annoying as Penny really treasured the time she spent here. She got to work on her own AI (!!!!) under Mr. Stark’s supervision, and she learned so much. Having something that made her essentially unable to do the work she wanted to do was horrible.
Nevertheless, she forced herself to try and ignore the pain and focus. If she ignored it, it would pass, right? That sounded about right.
Her plan failed maybe ten minutes into being executed, when she accidentally deleted an entire line of code. The bigger problem? She had no idea where the code had been deleted from.
She checked over everything, skimming the lines of code over and over again until she was getting sick of reading them. Maybe she would’ve found the mistake but her toothache had made her head ache so she was dealing with two very distracting, very annoying sources of pain.
Tears of frustration started welling up in her eyes, she very nearly deleted the entire code, but was stopped by a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“What’s happening here, Pen?” Mr. Stark asked, looking over her shoulder at the coding with a slight furrow in his brow. She shrugged helplessly,
“I think I deleted some of the code, by accident, of course! Now I can’t find where it happened,” she said, regretting the choice to open her mouth in the first place as the toothache seemed to get worse when the cool air of the lab made contact.
Mr. Stark nodded, reading over the coding and humming quietly. Penny sat there awkwardly for a few moments, just dwelling on the pain in her mouth until Mr. Stark tapped her shoulder lightly to get her attention.
“Right here, see?” He said, pointing. Penny looked at it, then nodded, forcing a smile on her face.
She typed the line back in with Mr. Stark double checking immediately.
“There you go! Crisis averted, we can all relax,” he said, grinning at her a little, then frowning.
Maybe her smile wasn’t as good as she hoped it was? Darn.
“You sure you’re okay Pen?” He asked, voice a little softer now. Penny hurried to reassure him, nodding her head.
“Yeah! Promise. Just tired, that’s all,” she said, diverting her gaze away from him and back down to her work.
“If you’re tired we can take a break,” Mr. Stark said, “Order in some pizza, maybe watch a movie?” He suggested, idly cleaning up the workbench beside Penny’s.
She couldn’t help but wince at the thought of food.
Did Mr. Stark notice?
Judging by the narrow-eyed look her was giving her…
Yes, he did.
“What? Is movie night really that bad, kiddo?” He asked, there was a slight joking tone hidden somewhere in his voice but Penny freaked out ever so slightly anyway.
“No! That’s not it-”
“Then what is it?” He asked.
Penny hesitated.
If she told him, he would tell May. Then May would take her to the dentist. Penny would have to sit through an appointment, Then, worst of all, Penny would have to watch May stress over the cost of the appointment. And that was a no-no.
“It’s nothing,” she said meekly, still trying to be somewhat convincing, but knowing she was failing. She heard Mr. Stark sigh deeply.
“Are you hurt? Is it school? Do you need help?” He had his arms crossed loosely against his chest and Penny was sure he was looking at her imploringly but she wouldn’t know for sure unless she glanced up at him but she really didn’t want to do that. “Talk to me, kid.”
Penny sighed after a moment, finally giving in. She fidgeted with her own hand slightly.
“Just got a bit of a toothache, that’s all,” she said quietly.
“If it was just a toothache, you wouldn’t be trying to keep it from me, Pen,” Mr. Stark said, putting his hand on her shoulder again. “How bad is it? Gimme a rating on a one to ten scale.”
Penny thought for a moment, poking around a little with her tongue.
“Uh.. a nine? Maybe… maybe eight?”
“So, a ten?” He pressed.
“Yeah…”
Mr. Stark sighed, “alright, how about this,” he started, but Penny already knew what was coming and she really didn’t want that so-
“No dentist!” She said hurriedly, finally looking up at him, “I’ll be fine without-”
“Pen we both know you won’t be.”
“But-”
“Are you scared of the dentist, kid?”
She hesitated, thinking about how to say this,
“I just… don’t like having someone poke around my mouth and stuff.”
He nodded, “That’s fair, but have you thought about the fact that if you let someone check in there for a few minutes, you might get rid of the pain?”
“I can live with the pain,” she said stubbornly, making Mr. Stark laugh a little.
“No you can’t,” he said, “I know you’re strong, kid, but you don’t have to just deal with the pain.”
She sighed, thinking it all over for a second. And considering the throbbing pain in her mouth and temple was making it hard to do so, maybe a visit to the dentist was the right way to go.
“Yeah, okay,” she mumbled.
He smiled at her, ruffling her hair, “Good. I’ll go and get things set up for you.”
-
“Is it really so bad, Pen?” Mr. Stark asked as Penny curled up on the couch, facing away from him. Not deliberately, of course, but it just so happened that she couldn’t really lie down on her left side due to the fact she’d just had a tooth cruelly ripped from her.
“Yeth,” she nodded, “Yeth it is.”
Now she had a slight lisp too? Honestly, she felt like screaming.
The fact that they’d managed to numb her mouth so well amazed her. With Mr. Stark’s warning, the dentist had stabbed her with needles so many times she’d lost count and pumped her so full of the anaesthetic that the left side of her mouth was still dead, she couldn’t even feel it if she poked at it. It was the weirdest thing.
It also numbed the pain which was a huge bonus, but she was sure it would be wearing off in a matter of minutes and giving way to the full force of… ouch.
Mr. Stark sat down on the couch beside her, a grin on his face, “Well that’s not good,” he said, “how about you give me a smile, huh?”
He got a halfhearted glare instead. Penny was sure he knew full well how ridiculous she looked when she tried to smile, it was like the left side of her lips just decided to fall asleep and stay flopped whilst the other half curled up. It looked so weird. Penny hated it. Mr. Stark, on the other hand, did not, he’d pounced on the opportunity to tease her for it.
He laughed now, a nice hearty laugh, “Yeah okay, that’s fair,” he grinned, getting comfortable and tossing Penny an extra pillow which she gladly latched on to.
“What movie were you thinking?” He asked.
Instead of giving him a verbal response, she took the remote from him and set the movie up herself, not trusting her mouth anymore. It had betrayed her in the most awful way. Penny wasn’t sure if she would ever forgive it.
The movie started and both of them turned to watch. Penny’s assumptions had been right, only fifteen minutes later, she started regaining the feeling in her mouth again.
Twenty minutes later it started to hurt.
Half an hour into the movie she’d lost the ability to focus on what was happening on screen and just let her eyes squeeze shut as she did her best to fall asleep or something. Just anything to try and ignore the pain.
There was some shuffling on her right, and then a hand found its way into her hair, carding through it gently.
Penny didn’t even think about the fact that this was Mr. Stark, her… mentor, her idol. She was tired, pain is surprisingly exhausting, so she let her head drop gently onto his shoulder.
He seemed to tense up for a moment, his hand stopping. Then he relaxed again, shifting slightly to make Penny more comfortable. Something she was thankful for.
She kept her focus on the hand in her hair, letting herself slowly drift off to sleep as the movie continued in the background.