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Dr. TonyStark: Or, how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Yarn.
Tony was sitting up in bed, carefully working on the PT exercises for his right hand. Currently he was doing the "thumb touch", which consisted of taking his thumb and touching each finger to it one by one. It seemed like something so incredibly simple, but the damage to his hand and forearm made it nearly impossible for more than a few minutes at a time. Tony was concentrating hard enough that he completely missed Peter coming into the room.
"Uhm, Tony, hey, I-I brought something for you to try?" Peter softly said, a few feet away from Tony's bedside. Peter realized he was on Tony's right side, and due to the occlusive bandage over his right eye, Tony actually couldn't see him.
Tony startled, jumping slightly in the bed, and quickly snatched his hand back into the sling as he turned his head to look at Peter. "Hey, kiddo, I didn't hear you come in. Come on over to this side, okay? It kind of cricks my neck to have to look all the way over there," Tony replied, clearly trying to pretend like he hadn't been "caught" doing PT.
For reasons Peter wasn't totally clear on, it bothered the older man for anyone to know that he was working on improving his baseline. Well, that's about to change...I hope... Peter thought to himself with a nervous grin. Peter came around the bedside, dragging over one of the hospital chairs as he did so, a bulky reusable shopping bag crinkling slightly as he set it down next to his chair.
"What's in the sack, Roo? Should I guess? Is it for me? Well, of course it's for me, why else would you have brought it, duh!" Tony smirked as he looked at Peter, then back to the bag again.
Tony reached over to the rail controls, and moved the bed into a more upright position, it was starting to be a joke amongst all of them that this was Tony's Business Position, from whence he did all of his "best work" while still on enforced primary bedrest.
Peter gave him a playful smile back, but there was a lurking nervousness in his eyes, and Tony immediately became suspicious.
"Peter. What are you up to? That look, it's the one you have right before you tell me that you blew up part of my workshop, or you admit that you got stabbed, again. Or when you want me to do something that you know I'm not going to like..." Tony trailed off, left eyebrow raised in suspicion.
"Weeeellll...I think it's better if I show you. Then you can have your freak-out refusal, then I'll give you the Puppy Eyes, and then you'll agree to do it, and we can all live happily ever after. Right? That's how this goes? It's been, like, two weeks for me since we last did this, but I know it's been several years for you. But I'm pretty sure that I can get you back into the swing of it in no time. I'm just that good." Peter answered, the teasing good-humour clear in his tone, even as his voice was alternately muffled and then clear as he began unpacking the bag onto the bed-table he had rolled over on top of Tony's lap.
Tony just looked on, brows lowered, wondering what on earth the spiderling was up to.
Peter pulled out a Starkpad first, setting it up so that it was propped up in the case, and then he queued up a youtube channel that Tony wasn't familiar with. Sheeple's Beginner Stitch Tutorials? Tony questioned mentally, squinting slightly to see the screen. Damn, he needed his glasses...
"Hey, uhm, did you talk to Pepper about any of this, before hand?" Tony asked, his eyes studying the blanket as he picked at it with his left hand.
Peter nodded, but he was unsure why Tony was asking. "Yeah, sure, she was totally on board. We also talked to your hand specialist physical therapy guy, Mr. Ramos, he was definitely on board, thought it was a great idea." Peter smiled at him, his grin bright and eager. As always. Tony blinked a couple of times in response.
"I'm afraid to know what else is in that bag." Tony muttered to himself, once again squinting at the Starkpad in front of him.
Still grinning, Peter brought out two large skeins of yarn, one in a crimson red, the other in a bright robin's-egg blue, along with two small metal hooks, scissors, what looked like tiny plastic safety pins, a pencil and paper, and two small wooden bowls with a slit carved into one side of each of them.
Peter quickly put the yarn into the bowls, and handed Tony one of the metal hooks. The one he gave to Tony had a large rubber grip added to it, and Tony squeezed it experimentally a few times. It felt a lot like the ball they gave him to work on his PT with for his right hand. Peter hid a smile and pretended not to notice, then asked what color yarn Tony wanted.
Tony was completely baffled as to what was going on, and mutely pointed to the bowl with the red yarn. Nodding, Peter leaned around the small table and laid the bowl down in Tony's lap. Peter then took the edge of the yarn and made a quick slip knot before gently wrapping the yarn tail around the first two fingers of Tony's right hand, and putting the hook with the yarn loop into his left hand.
The look in Tony's eyes was...horrified. "Uhm, seriously kid? You want IRON MAN to learn to, what, knit?!" Tony's mouth just hung open for a second, how anyone could put that much lost dignity into staring out of one eye was kind of a marvel, Peter thought to himself.
"No. No way. No, no, no way. This is what little old ladies do while they sit in rocking chairs and watch cooking shows. Nope. I'm not doing it," Tony continued to shake his head, though he was still holding onto the yarn and the crochet hook, as if they had been fused to his hands.
Peter looked over at him askance.
"Tony...You love the nursery rocker in Morgan's room. I heard you refused to let Pepper get rid of it when Morgan moved on to pureed food and not nursing anymore, and I've seen pictures of you in it. Like, so, SOOOO many pictures. Pepper has a file on her phone. She takes one every time you're in the rocker and you don't realize she's there. There are thousands. I think she's going to download them to an external hard drive to clear up memory space on her phone," Peter countered with an evil grin.
Peter continued. "And the cooking shows, dude, seriously? We've watched 'The Great British Bake Off', EVERY DAY since you woke up. Like, they learned to schedule your physical therapy around it! Mr. Ramos and Mr. Harbin told me!" Peter said, his giggling almost drowning out his words.
Tony just huffed in response, and rolled his eye. Refusing to grace that statement with a retort.
But Peter wasn't done yet. "And, Tony, I'm sorry to tell you, but...when you installed the 'baby monitor protocol' and the 'training wheels protocol' in my suit...you 100% became a Mother Hen. You didn't even give it a snarky name. Nope, you went flat out Weird Maternal Spinster Aunt-ing on me. You out-aunt'd Aunt May!" Peter was trying to stifle his laughter, and failing.
Tony, sat there in bed, his mouth working but no sound coming out, the absolute offense in his expression making it instantly clear what he thought of that statement. Peter couldn't help but recall the space ship to Titan, when Peter told him that the new suit was so intuitive, it was kind of his fault that Peter had stowed away. Tony had worn that same shell-shocked, affronted look then, too.
Before Tony could actually form words, Peter hurried on. "I think crochet is right up your alley," Peter finished his diatribe, smirk decidedly in place.
Tony just glared at him, mouth now firmly shut and his lips set in a thin line of displeasure. But he was still holding the crochet hook, and he was absently rubbing at the yarn with his right hand. Peter took that as a tacit agreement to continue.
Just as a cheery little intro song started on the video, Tony reached over and tapped the screen to pause the clip. He was still awkwardly clutching the yarn and the hook, but he looked at Peter with a slightly pleading, but more resigned than anything, expression.
"Okay, heh, uhm, look, did Pepper tell you to grab...my...glasses by any chance? I can't see anything up close, and this is going to be an absolute pain in my ass if I have to squint through all this with one working eye," Tony begrudgingly asked.
"Oh!" And Peter actually had the gall to laugh at him, Tony tried to be incensed but couldn't work up the energy to be much more than vaguely annoyed by that point in the morning. I am not up for this level of irritation before noon, Tony thought to himself.
"Sorry, Mr. St--Tony, I almost forgot. Yeah, here, they're in this bag somewhere... Pepper told me you vehemently deny needing them, but she said you were full of crap...blue case, right?" Peter's voice was again muffled as he dug around in the bag.
"Kid, you are like a freaking jack-in-the-box, ugh, just watching you go up and down and in and out of that bag is giving me vertigo," Tony sniped back at the boy, working hard at staying annoyed. It was always difficult to stay angry with Peter. He was just so...bright, and earnest...It was vaguely disgusting. God, I missed this kid, Tony thought to himself with a soft smile he quickly tried to hide.
Peter's curiosity was not about to be deferred. "So, when did those happen? While I was gone, I guess?" Peter asked, gesturing towards Tony's face.
Rolling his eye slightly, Tony reluctantly answered. "Uhm. Not exactly. About...oh...six or seven years ago...a little after I turned forty-six, I think" Tony quietly said, head tucked down and looking far too enthralled with the crochet hook in his hand.
Peter, blinking rapidly for a few seconds, processed that information. "Wait, but, I-I was still around six years ago! Why did you never wear them then? Did, did you just...suffer all the time? I bet you got some killer headaches! Dude, that's so stupid! Is that why the Stark Internship certificate was upside down? It IS, ISN'T IT! You couldn't tell it was UPSIDE DOWN, oh my God, Mr. Stark, that's...just...so dumb..." Peter trailed off, giggling hard. "You wore sunglasses all the time, why did you not just get a prescription put in those?"
Tony was now truly annoyed, and he gave Peter a baleful look over the top of his glasses for good measure. "First off, thanks so much for the ego decimation, I needed that, I'm sure."
Peter just laughed harder at him, and Tony was starting to see the humor in spite of himself.
"And, because it would have been a lot of trouble! And I only need them when I'm reading, I don't need them all the time. I can see distance just fine, thank-you!" Tony huffed, glaring at Peter out from under a lowered eyebrow. The effect was definitely ruined by the large bandage on the other eye.
Letting out a long sigh, Peter shook his head and made a concious effort to Be Serious, even as he wanted to giggle at the looks Tony was giving him. Tony was making a valiant effort, but trying to look angry or even threatening while sitting in bed covered in bandages and wearing a plaid bathrobe was a feat he just wasn't pulling off.
He needs to talk to Fury about how to look menacing with an eye patch, Pether thought with a smile.
Back to business, Peter hit play on the video, and soon a British woman was giving them slow and detailed instructions about how to start a chain, and then how to do a simple single crochet stitch all the way across before chaining one, and turning the work for row two.
Peter had been practicing along with the video in his room for a few days, so he felt like he had a vague understanding of how the process worked. He was following along fairly well. Fortunately, Tony took almost no time to figure out the pattern and the steps involved, but he still seemed to be having trouble. At first, Peter thought Tony's difficulties were from maintaining the tension in his stitches with his stiff right hand, but after a few minutes of stealthy observation, Peter realized it was another problem all together. Tony was trying to follow a RIGHT handed video but working from a LEFT handed set up, and Peter quickly found a "Lefty's Guide To Beginner Crochet" for Tony to follow instead. Progress seemed to be steadier after that.
After about six rows of stitches, a mixture of double and half-double crochet, Tony had worked out most of his tension problems and had made a pretty decent first go at a swatch of work. It had also been close to forty-five minutes, and his right hand was starting to tremble significantly. Peter had noticed the muscle spasms a few minutes before, and he had tried to stop Tony, but Tony was in the middle of a row, and didn't want to stop until he reached the end of it.
Finally, with a sigh and a pained grunt as he used his left hand to gently stretch out the fingers on his right, Tony laid back against the pillows behind him. The crochet swatch lying loose in his lap with the bowl and the yarn.
"This, my boy, frankly, just sucks. No two ways about it," Tony quietly said, his good eye focused up toward the ceiling as he continued to gently rub and knead his right palm with his left hand.
Peter looked on, doing his best to hide his sympathy, knowing it was not at all welcome. It was a step forward to Tony to admit that he was hurting at all.
"Yeah, but, Tony, look at this, you can crochet now! Check this out! I mean, now you can make, like, scarves and hats and maybe even mittens! There are patterns online for evvvverrrything!! I went looking last night, and, seriously, it was cool, I had no idea you could make so much stuff just from a hook and some yarn!" Peter enthused, his normal excitement about learning and making anything coming to the forefront, even if an unexpected handicraft.
Smiling gently at the boy, unwilling to dampen his spirits, Tony nodded. "Yep. I guess you guys will have me working the wool mines as soon as I get home, won't you? Whole new department of Stark Industries, the Wooly Sock Division. You can take over as head of R&D, I'll be sitting on the porch making socks and keeping Morgan from falling into the lake," Tony quipped back at him with a grin.
Grinning back, Peter disagreed. "Nah, Mr. Stark, I think you'd have to learn to knit to make socks. The stitches are littler, with less holes." Peter then gave him a long look, and Tony brought his focus back on the kid, suddenly wondering what was going through that brilliant, but devious, young mind.
"I did think about knitting, that's what Mr. Ramos suggested at first, because you use both hands more, but I was kind of afraid to give you knitting needles. I was pretty sure that you would stab me with them. I heal fast, but it still hurts. Or that you'd use them to mutiny against the nurses and make your hobbling escape out to...you know, the lobby on your rolling walker before we could catch you. That'd just be embarrassing. At least wait until you've graduated to a cane, dude, the walker is for old people," Peter was laughing too hard to continue, having just thrown himself forward chest first into the bed, grabbing the blankets in both fists as he laughed so hard he was wheezing.
Tony did his best to sound affronted, but not even he could keep the laughter out of his voice at the mental picture of his daring, pajama, robe, and slipper-clad escape attempt from the hospital's confines in, yes, the damn rolling walker/scooter thing they were making him use. It was both better, and worse, than the wheelchair. Better, because at least he could stand and shuffle, worse, because as the kid said, it really, absolutely, belonged in a nursing home.
"You know, the least they could have done would be to give me one of those scooters, like they do for the patient's with foot and ankle injuries. Those are so much cooler," Tony replied, rubbing Peter's back as he continued to giggle softly into the bedding.
Finally sitting back up, wiping the laughing tears from his eyes, Peter shook his head. "Nope, I tried one of those, actually, thinking the same thing. But you've got to have two working arms, otherwise you just end up going in circles all the time because you'll pull to the left. I tried, Tony, I really did," Peter spoke up, earnest even red-faced from his laughter.
Tony leaned forward to tussle Peter's hair as he replied. "Ahhh, well, thanks for the thought then, Itsy Bitsy. Hopefully they'll let me graduate to a cane here soon, Mr. Harbin and I talked about it my last session."
Peter sat back down with a sigh, leaning back into the chair and starting to put the crochet supplies back into the bag.
Watching with languid interest, Tony then asked, "so, was it always going to be yarn handicrafts for me, or did you have other ideas? Maybe making dream catchers, or evil-eyes with popsicle sticks and some glittery feathers?" Tony asked with a smirk.
Peter grinned, locking his fingers behind his head as he leaned and stretched in the chair. "Nah, Morgan wasn't going to let me raid her art supplies like that. I DID think about sewing, but you already know how to hand sew because I've seen you do it with the Spider Suit, and it seemed crazy to lug a big machine in here." Peter finally paused to breathe, much to Tony's relief. Tony wasn't sure how much longer the kid was going to talk before he passed out from lack of oxygen.
"Then I thought about something called crewel embroidery, but it seemed kind of, well, archaic." Peter stopped there, looking at Tony, a glint of mischeviousness suddenly in his eyes.
"Unless you want to start working on tapestries for the Tower? Big, huge things, covering all the walls, the great Avengers Battles! Castle Stark! I think Steve would crap himself if you renamed the compound that!" He once again trailed off giggling.
Tony cracked a wide grin at that one, but before he could come up with a snappy reply, Peter pressed on.
"Oh, by the way, I heard you guys bought the Tower back, after the Blip. Part of the SI ReStart The World Initiative. Purchasing obsolete businesses and running them at cost to employ people. That's pretty amazing, Tony," Peter said with a truly pleased look on his face.
Tony just waved his hand, dismissing his philanthropy as he always did. He had never been comfortable with true praise, and he immediately had something snarky to combat the seriousness. "Yeah, well, in a few months I'm sure the Wooly Design Initiative will be able to outfit all my new employees in scarves just in time for next winter. Besides. Pepper deserves the credit there, at least 88% of it." Peter didn't understand the joke, or the sudden smile it invoked.
-oOo-
The next morning Tony came back from PT to find a surprise waiting in his room. He was being brought back in the wheelchair, because once he was done with physical therapy, he rarely had the energy or muscle tension in his right side to be able to make it back down the hallway with just the rolling walker.
Jimmy, the young medical aide who helped out in the PT department while he was in college, wheeled him into the room. Jimmy was about to ask Tony if he wanted to sit in the chair or his bed, when they both realized there was a third option.
"Oh...I didn't realize they had brought in new furniture. It looks...comfortable?" The boy couldn't have been much more than eighteen, and Tony couldn't help but smirk at the kid's attempt at nonchalance in the face of an unexpected nursery glider rocker appearing in a patient's room that wasn't on the maternity floor.
Smiling broadly, Jim put the brakes on the chair, and came around the front to steady Tony as he pushed himself up one handed. He was able to shuffle short distances without the walker, but the staff still tried to be on hand to catch if he did seem like he was going to fall.
Sighing, Tony answered, "don't worry, the Snap did a lot of damage, but I'm not expecting, I promise." Tony's quip was rewarded with a soft chuckle from Jimmy.
"Truly though, it's from my daughter's room. She likes to for us to read in it. I'm not sure why it's in here though..." Tony trailed off, suddenly knowing exactly who had arranged for the glider to have shown up in his room. And probably who lugged the thing up here to begin with. A certain dark-haired spiderling, to be exact.
"Well, which option would you like today, Mr. Stark? Maybe the rocker, since someone obviously took trouble to get it up here for you?" Jim asked, the humor lending a twinkle to his eyes, but his tone and bearing was completely professional.
"Yeah, I'm just going to give in to my son's teasing, take me to the rocker, Jeeves!" Tony said with a wave of his hand towards the glider.
Jimmy did actually chuckle at that, and slowly the two of them shuffled over to the chair, and Tony gingerly lowered himself into it.
"You need anything else, Mr. Stark? Oh, and here's your nurse call button, if you need someone, just press this, but you know all that," Jimmy said, grabbing the wheelchair on his way out the door.
"Yeah, thanks, Jim, I'll see you tomorrow?" Tony asked, leaning over to look at the boy from his left eye.
"Yup, then I'm off for a few days, but I'll see you tomorrow. I hope you feel better soon, Mr. Stark!" And Jimmy was gone.
Tony relaxed back into the rocker with a stifled moan, leaning his head back into the cushioned chair back behind him. He closed his eye with a smile, gently using his left foot to push off, relax, push off, relax...setting the gentle gliding mechanism into motion. A few minutes later, he was deeply asleep.
-oOo-
"Hey-" Peter cut himself off abruptly, whirling back around to Pepper with a devious smile on his face. She turned from where she was closing the door to the room, and immediately saw the same spectacle he did. Raising his eyebrows, Peter motioned with one hand as quietly as he could over to Pepper. Grinning, she pulled out her phone.
Tony was seated in the glider rocker, the yarn bowl and yarn in the floor to his right, and his Starkpad opened on the bedside tray table, the sounds of a "Beginning Crochet Stitch Guide" video playing on the tablet in front of him. He had the crochet hook in his left hand again, and the yarn tension and the beginnings of the scarf he was working on carefully held in his right. He had his glasses on, and Tony was fully focused on the small row of stitches he was working with. The TV on the wall was turned to what appeared to be some kind of nature documentary, but Tony didn't seem to be paying much attention to it.
Finally realizing that he had visitors, Tony looked up over the rims of his glasses, and instantly his look of concentration fell into something mulish and much more antagonistic.
Glaring at Peter, "say it and I'll blast both of you with repulsors when I get out of here," Tony growled at them.
Pepper smiled deviously. "It's okay Tony, we won't say anything," and Tony heard the tell-tale electronic shutter click as he registered the phone in her hand. Peter's grin was absolutely evil.
Pepper tucked her head to speak into her watch, never letting up eye contact with the man in the chair in front of her. "Friday, please upload Peter's photo to his Private and Very Secure Server, please."
"Done Mrs. Boss!" Friday replied, sounding far more pleased than an AI should be able to do.
Tony just muttered under his breath in annoyance, and rolled his eye, but there was a grin pulling at his mouth, even as he tried to hide it. "If you're going to stay, then someone turn the TV onto channel four, the British Bake-Off is coming on in about five minutes. They're doing a flan today, and mine always turn out wonky."
AN: Reviews are bread and butter for a writer, if you enjoyed this, or have criticsms, please take a moment to review. And if you have anything you'd like to see happen in this little alternate universe I'm playing in, let me know! Plot bunnies love to share the toast and jam, too.
- RB