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Tony makes his way down the hallway, tapping away on his tablet as he went. Schematics, various half-finished blueprints, his plan for his and Pepper's anniversary... all that stuff. Right now though, he's heading down to the chem labs to find Peter.
The boy was trying to make a new, even stronger version of his web fluid now that he had access to the great resources of Stark Industries, at Tony’s insistence. There was some protest, but the boy caved once the topic of how better webs could better save lives came up.
Tony had offered his own personal labs, but they were too robotics-oriented to handle whatever chemicals Peter was going to be messing with, apparently. Tony takes a large bite out of a donut, shifting his grip on the bag of donuts tucked into the crook of his arm.
The kid would need some sugar; Tony's fairly certain the boy's been in the lab for an hour or more by now. Pair that with his high metabolism due to his mutation makes for one hungry kid, and sugar is the most efficient way to solve that. Kid's too skinny for his age, really.
Doors slide open for him automatically as he continues on, finally arriving at the lab Peter had taken over. They had made sure to clear out any other researchers beforehand, didn't want any nosy questions.
Tony steps in as the door slides open, not looking up from his tablet. "Hey, kid, I bought you some chocolate donuts-"
A mini-explosion rings out in the room, causing Tony to jerk back instinctively, heart rate racking up as he drops the tablet and donuts with a crack and a muffled thump.
"Sir, your heart rate is above usual levels. There is no need to panic: Peter has simply made an error in the chemicals he was mixing. He is injured, however." JARVIS' familiar voice sounds, and Tony tries to breathe. JARVIS would tell him if anything was bad bad. He tries to focus and rakes his gaze across the room to find-
Peter, staring back at him with wide eyes, arms raised in front of him like he was previously holding something. Oh. Peter's bleeding. There's shards of glass on the floor, some unknown chemical spill slowly spreading (dangerously close to Peter's shoes) and Peter does have his safety gloves on, but the glass had exploded in a way that had caused shards to be embedded in his arms.
Peter slowly looks back at his arms, face twisting into a grimace as he gingerly steps out of range of the spreading chemical puddle. "Heyyyyyy, Mr. Stark! Um."
Tony snaps back into reality at the boy's voice, quickly sliding into Lab Safety Mode.
"Sit." He orders, pointing at a nearby chair and stalking off to grab the first aid kit stored in every lab. Peter does as he says quietly, still frowning at his arms, where tiny bits of glass stick out of pale skin and blood wells up at certain spots-
Tony inhales noisily, finally finding the first aid kit and going over to Peter’s side, dragging a chair as he went and grabbing a (clean) metal tray.
"Cleaning personnel are on their way, sir." JARVIS informs pleasantly now that Tony has calmed down.
"Thanks, Jarvis." Tony mutters as he sits down next to a now sheepish-looking Peter, cracking open the first aid kit.
"Kid." He begins; sighs. Takes out the tweezers and gauze, laying them out on top of a plastic sheet on the table beside them. Drags the metal tray closer and stretches out his hand for Peter to put his arm in.
Once the boy is as comfortable as he can get, Tony gets to work plucking out the shards of glass, one by one, dropping them onto the metal tray with little plinks. Peter regenerates at a much faster rate than the average person, so Tony tries to be as quick as he can be so that the wounds don’t heal around the glass and force him to rip them out with force.
Peter winces here and there, especially when Tony pulls out a particularly large glass shard. Other than that, though, he quietly watches Tony work, watches him douse the gauze in disinfectant and swipe a piece against whatever cuts haven’t healed.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Tony asks finally when he deems all the glass is now out of Peter’s body and on the metal tray.
“Well, just to be clear, um.” Peter scrunches up his face, obviously relunctant to explain. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I would hope not.” Tony snorts, rummaging through the medkit for a band-aid. Each kit usually has two types, the plaster decorated with cartoon versions of one of the Avengers… There they are. He picks out the two of them, one decorated with Ironman’s visage and the other with Hulk’s snarling face. “Brucie or me, kid.”
“I’ll take Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark.” Peter grins cheekily. Tony huffs in mock hurt as he starts carefully sticking on the Hulk band-aids onto every cut in sight. “Is this really necessary, Mr. Stark? They’ll all be healed in an hour or so.”
“It’s a mark of shame, kiddo. Proof that you had a little mess up in Stark Labs.” Tony replies without missing a beat, applying the last band-aid. “I hope you’ve learnt your lesson.”
“You surprised me, Mr. Stark. I got distracted when you came in and accidentally added too much of the-” Peter cuts off when Tony shushes him aggressively in the midst of disposing of the glass into the proper bin.
“I don’t wanna hear it. A real scientist doesn’t stop for anything less than the end of the world, and real scientists who are also not normal civilians especially don’t stop when the world’s ending.” Tony lectures, ignoring Peter’s pout and putting his hands on his hips.
“We’re taking a break for the day, watch a movie or something-” Tony pauses to scoop up his forgotten tablet (still perfectly intact because Stark products are not weak) and donuts from the floor. “And eat these great donuts. We can make popcorn too.”
Peter lights up, a grin on his face as he hops off his chair and bounces over to Tony. “Can we watch Up?”
“That’s the third time this month, choose something else.” Tony fishes out a donut from the bag and hands it to the kid as they step out of the lab. Hey, there’s the cleaning personnel!
“It’s a good movie!” Peter argues, taking a bite out of the offered donut. “Ooh, this is good.”
“Yeah, I get them from this one guy downtown; he refuses to hand over his secret recipe. I think he’s close to cracking, though.” Tony answers, watching the boy chomp through the sweet treat, arms littered with green Hulk bandages and thinks, I’m going to die for this kid, one day.
And it’ll be worth it.
(They end up watching Up. Peter cries again through mouthfuls of buttery popcorn; Tony wonders whether he should pull up that old idea of a flying house for a base.)