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When Tony went to recruit Peter for Team Iron Man he was well aware that the kid was only fifteen. His background checks were pretty thorough so there wasn’t much about Peter’s Tragic Backstory TM that Tony wasn’t aware of.
What he didn’t expect was for Peter to have the most magnetic personality he had ever had the pleasure to experience; hell even Team Cap joked around with the kid when they were fighting and trash talked like they had known him for years and not just minutes. Just like that, Peter was part of their dysfunctional little family. Tony had to admit, he often forgot Peter’s actual age and, while he did coddle the kid a little, Peter became more and more like a true colleague everyday.
It was only times like this, when Peter was laid up and passed out that Tony really processed Peter’s actual age.
The kid actually had a pretty good streak going for a while – he hadn’t had to visit the MedBay for a little over a month and Tony felt relieved; maybe Peter had finally gotten the hang of things? Well about ninth percent of him felt that way, the other ten percent was sitting on pins and needles waiting for the next catastrophe (PTSD does all kinds of weird things to your brain). It did help some: it gave him and Bruce the chance to formulate an anesthetic that would work consistently on the kid in addition to NSAIDs and oral antibiotics. It had been a pretty productive month and he had gotten to see Peter nearly pass out when he met Bruce for the first time.
‘Well it was a good streak while it lasted,’ Tony thought sardonically from his perch on the chair next to Peter’s bed.
The kid had been fighting Rhino in Times Square (Tony had tried to tell Peter to just let the man destroy it, every self-respecting New Yorker knew that Times Square was the worst part of Manhattan) and had been really distracted by all the tourists taking pictures and videos and, generally, just getting in the way. All it had taken was a moment of losing focus and Rhino had plucked Peter out of the air and twisted the kid’s left leg in a way that had made scream and go nearly limp.
Tony could only watch in horror as FRIDAY projected the next part of the fight onto his HUD as he blasted toward the fight as quickly as the Iron Man armor would allow. Rhino had thrown Peter around like a rag doll and the kid had barely done anything to protect himself or prevent it.
Tony had worked himself into such a frothing rage that, by the time he had arrived in Times Square and caught Peter the next time he was thrown, he nearly killed the Rhino on sight. As it was, the man was probably going to have a significant recovery ahead of him on the Raft. In fact, he may be permanently disfigured.
Shame, that.
Peter had stayed passed out for the flight back to the Tower MedBay but had woken up pretty quickly once his leg was manipulated by the team of doctors and nurses that Tony had on call. Miraculously, he had only cracked a few ribs and bruised one of his kidneys. He didn’t even have a concussion!
Well that’s what the doctors had thought before the released the mechanism on the Spidey suit that allowed it to fall loose on Peter’s body and they had started to remove it. He knee had immediately started swelling up now that there wasn’t any pressure on it and it had bruised up his thigh and down his shin.
And Peter, who stoically took stitches without any numbing, who had his shoulder dislocation reduced with no pain meds a few months ago with only a grunt, had burst into pained whimpers and sobs the second anyone touched his leg and had begged to be knocked out.
In no time flat, they had placed a catheter and pushed a dose of the pain killers and the shiny new anesthetic Tony had just finished synthesizing and Peter had finally relaxed into the bed and had gone boneless. Dr. Winters, the orthopedic specialist Tony kept on staff had cleared his throat in the silence that followed “Let’s get an MRI on that knee pronto.”
And here they were now, Tony sitting next to the hospital bed the kid was laid up in and observing Peter’s relaxed face as he slept. Jesus, the kid looked a lot younger than sixteen when he was asleep. The over-sized hospital gown that slipped down his clavicles, the disheveled curls and the bruise colored bags under Peter’s eyes didn’t really help him look any older either. Dr. Winters and the radiologist who interpreted Peter’s MRI had only needed a brief look at the images before they had declared his ACL to be ‘ripped to shreds’ and had scheduled him for surgery the following morning with Dr. Winters.
Peter had slept through all of this excitement but they had decreased his anesthetic to nothing and his pain meds down to a more reasonable level once they had immobilized his leg in a thick and padded device that stretched from mid thigh down to nearly his ankle and had elevated it. Now the only thing to do was for Tony to wait for the kid to wake up.
It was taking longer and expected and he was getting antsy.
At the two hour mark of waiting he had stopped the pacing he had started at the one hour mark and collapsed back into his chair with his StarkPad to join the game of Among Us that Rhodey had started with some of the other Avengers (his honeybear could never lie effectively to him and Tony was quite gleeful when he ejected him on the first round). Which is why he didn’t notice the minute signs Peter exhibited to show he was asking up.
“Did you just call Cap ‘sus’,” Peter asked him groggily causing Tony to jump a foot in the air and drop the tablet to the floor.
“He’s a terrible liar,” Tony responded, sitting back in his chair, table forgotten on the floor, and crossing his legs with a smile on his face. “How you feeling kiddo? Any pain?”
“I’m… not sure,” Peter mumbled, his brows scrunching together in thought, pupils blown wide from the drugs. Fuck he was precious. Even out of commission as he was and after worrying Tony to death for the past few hours Peter could make Tony into a gooey mess.
God, Tony loved this stupid child.
“Well if you can’t tell its probably working,” Tony told him sagely. At least that was his own experience with pain meds anyway.
“What happened?” Peter asked, making a clumsy gesture at his leg with the hand that was attached to the SPO2 finger monitor. Peter frowned at it and pulled on the wire with his other hand, causing the machine to tilt forward ominously and Tony to jump forward to right it.
“Let’s not touch that okay Kiddo?” He said gently, untangling Peter’s hand from the wire and keeping it clasped in his own. “And the Rhino got a hold of you, what do you remember?”
Peter’s whole face scrunched up as he struggled to think through the haze of drugs and Tony waited patiently for the kid to put everything together. “There were some people standing to close and taking video and I think… did I try to jump in front of them?” This newest iteration of pain meds was really knocking the kid for a loop. They seemed to control his pain well enough to though. Hmmm… Tony would have to get all the data from Cho later and sit down with Bruce to see if they could refine the formula, he was willing to bet that the hangover the kid would feel coming off on the meds would be spectacular.
“That’s basically it,” Tony told him. “Rhino got ahold of you and tore your ACL and then tossed you around a bit until I got there.”
Peter looked frustrated, his facial features pinching. “No one got hurt though right?”
Tony hesitated. “There were a couple of minor injuries-,”
“Fuck!” Peter exclaimed, squeezing the metal bed frame in his hand so hard it crumpled like tissue paper. “I should have been paying better attention! This is all-,” Tony lurched forward and clamped his hand over Peter’s mouth, ignoring the glare the kid gave him and the disgusting way he licked Tony’s hand like that was actually going to force him to let go.
“No.” Tony said firmly, not breaking eye contact. “No it is not your fault. If anything, its Rhino’s fault for deciding to attack a heavily populated place in the middle of the city. And it’s the tourists fault if they didn’t get out of the way. You saved a lot of lives today Pete.” Tony told him seriously, finally releasing the kid’s face and washing his hands with the sanitizer the nurse left out on the bedside table.
“I wasn’t good enough,” Peter insisted, managing to look both high and dejected. “I couldn’t protect them or myself. You had to come rescue me.”
And Tony’s hear squeezed tight at the forlorn look on the kid’s face. “That’s why we’re a team. You may have turned down a spot on the Avengers for now but that doesn’t mean your not still part of us.” He pretended not to notice the way Peter’s eyes got a little watery (the drugs always made him more emotional) and made a show of picking his tablet up off the floor so Peter could wipe his eyes on the back of his hand.
“What’s going to happen now?” Peter asked a little hoarsely, resting back against the stack of pillows behind him and blinking sleepily.
“In the morning Dr. Winters is going to repair your ACL but, until then, you’re going to sleep and let the drugs do their job.” Peter nodded a little, a smile just tilting up the corner of his mouth.
“And what are you going to do? Watch me sleep? Pretty creepy Mr. Stark,” Peter told him cheekily.
“Not likely,” Tony told him. “Watching you sleep is boring and, besides, the rest of the team let Cap get away with killing everybody last time. They’re all completely hopeless without me there to tell them how suspicious he is,” Tony said, gesturing at the screen where is showed that the crew mates had been defeated by the impostor combo of Cap and Rhodey.
Peter chortled a little but his eyes were already half-lidded and he snuggled back into the bed without further prompting from Tony. “I’ll be here if you need anything bambino,” Tony said softly, he-joining the lobby for the next game but not missing the way that Peter smiled as he fell asleep.