“Is that blood?”
“No?”
“That’s not a question you’re supposed to answer with another question.”
Peter sheepishly looked away from Tony’s gaze, clutching his stomach gingerly. Truth be told, it was blood, and quite a bit of it. It wasn’t his fault that the robbers had knives. His spidey-senses were a bit overloaded at the time, what, with around four people attacking him at once. It was only when he looked down that he saw the knife sticking out of his abdomen. And he was only half-way through the fight at that point. He couldn’t really wonder into a hospital either. So after wrapping up the fight (it took him longer than he liked to web the intruders up), Peter swung his way back to Avengers Tower.
With a sigh, Tony motioned for Peter to sit up on the bench. The kid did, wincing as he reopened the wound. He’ll heal soon enough, that’s the handy part of being bitten by a genetically altered spider, yet Peter still didn’t like walking around and leaving a trail of blood everywhere. So, Peter pulled away the material coated in his own blood, pulling the top section of his suit down around his hips.
“Kid, you can’t keep running off and fighting bad guys by yourself,” Tony remarked, “at least take Clint with you. He could do with a run out”.
Peter huffed a laugh, a small smile on his lips before he shook his head. “I didn’t mean too,” Peter muttered, watching as Tony put on surgical gloves, “I happened to stumble upon them. And I couldn’t really walk away. I know the shop owners, and they couldn’t afford to be broken into again”.
“Again?”
“Yeah, this would be the third time in six months. They’re just really unlucky.”
“How do you know them?” Tony quizzed as he prepared the needle and thread with steady hands.
“They know Aunt May, give her discounts if we don’t have enough money to get groceries. Really nice people. So you understand why I wanted to help them”.
“Yeah, I do,” Tony made his way back over, rolling up his sleeves as he placed the medical equipment next to Peter, “but that doesn’t mean you can go and get yourself stabbed”.
“Well, I didn’t plan on getting stabbed… it just kinda happened,” Peter shifted again as Tony motioned for him to move closer. The sympathetic eyes that Tony flashed him were the only warning he got before Tony started to wipe away the congealed blood from around the cut. “Shit,” Peter breathed, his body automatically jumping away from the prodding hands.
“Language,” Tony quipped with a smirk, but obviously understood where Peter was coming from as he proceeded with smaller wipes instead. “Now,” he began, “I might not be the best surgeon in the world, but I can do some pretty good stitches,” Tony set aside the wipe, pushing a cotton wad against the cut, this time ignoring the hiss of discomfort from Peter. “And I know you don’t really need stitches, but it’ll help the cut heal quicker than if you didn’t. Also, it helps keep the blood inside, you know, where it’s meant to be”, Tony glanced up at Peter with raised eyebrows, “I suggest next time you keep it there”.
“Yeah yeah, I will,” Peter grinned, grabbing the cotton wad on his abdomen whilst Tony grabbed the needle. Tony pushed Peter’s hand to the side and started to push the needle in. Peter let out a curt shout of pain, screwing his eyes closed as Tony continued.
“This’ll teach you not to do it again,” Tony basically sing-songed as he did the next stitch, good and tight to keep the skin closed.
“How many times do I have to tell you,” Peter hissed out, “I didn’t try to get stabbed”.
“No one tries to get stabbed- well maybe Bucky does, but he’s weird so that doesn’t count- anyway, no one wants to get stabbed, it’s not fun, but you need to be better,” Tony lectured.
“Usually my spidey senses warn me,” Peter stuttered. Okay, right, he wasn’t the best with needles, sue him. They just weren’t meant to go inside you. Who ever looked at a needle and went ‘yeah, you know what, I think this will be brilliant if it went inside my body!’. It just wasn’t natural.
“You can’t rely on your spidey-sense to protect you all the time Peter,” Tony had a fatherly tone in his voice as he lectured Peter. “You need to asses the area and who you’re fighting. Don’t go in blind”.
“I didn’t go in blind, they just happened to hide their knives very well”.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Tony jabbed Peter harder than necessary with the needle. Oh, right, don’t annoy someone who has something pointy. You’d think Peter would’ve learnt that after today. “You need to scan your enemies, see what they have on them”.
“Not everyone has a FRIDAY on them at all times,” Peter replied bitterly. It wasn’t his fault that he was here, he just happened to be outsmarted this one time. How many times had Peter put on that suit and walked away unharmed? Many. Peter hadn’t really been counting, but he knew that is was more than ten.
“How do you think I survived without FRIDAY or JARVIS? Huh? By actually looking at people. Being able to see what people had on them,” Tony finished the stitches, cutting the thread and standing back. “And don’t diss FRIDAY. She scanned you the second you walked- I mean stumbled- into this place. She knew that none of your organs hadn’t be ruptured, thank christ for that”. Tony fixed Peter with a heavy stare before turning away, pulling off the gloves and dumping them in the bin. “You know all the stuff, don’t stretch too much, don’t do any backflips, don’t do anything too strenuous. But I’m going to add another one to the list you shouldn’t do,” Tony turned around with fire in his eyes. “Don’t go on missions by yourself.”
Peter held Tony’s stare for a couple of seconds before dropping his gaze with a meek “Yes Sir,” as an answer. Hopping down from the workbench, Peter made his way back over to his school back, pulling out his normal clothes. “Is it alright if I tell May that you called me in to help with something?” Peter looked over at Tony with wide eyes, “otherwise she’ll be asking where I was”.
“Sure kid,” Tony motioned at Peter, “just leave your suit here. I was wanting to do some upgrades anyway on the suit, so you coming in was actually handy. Although it wasn’t the way I wanted you in… How about some added armour on the body panels?”