newyorknative | Plastic tubes and pots and pans

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tony stark : im_ironman

Plastic tubes and pots and pans

Everything that happened following their escape was a blur to Peter. Once they were loaded up in the Quinjet, Tony seemed pretty much gone - whatever adrenaline that had been fueling him was running out, and he didn't heal the way Peter did. His chest was a raw, open wound, and he was separated from Peter, taken immediately for treatment. Now that they were finally free, Peter was going to have to figure out how the fuck to proceed. This wasn't something he could just slip down an alleyway and escape from.

He opted to do what he did best and pull the 'quiet, unassuming teenager' card. He supposed he was lucky there were bigger things on the table, like the exploding secret Hydra base behind them. Nobody was bothering him for answers, and they probably assumed he was just a mutant they'd kidnapped for experimentation. As long as he kept his mouth shut, he could probably scrape by. For now, anyway. When that ran out...maybe he could fake cry? Look, he's the worst liar. The best tactic is to just avoid.

Natasha stayed by Peter's side, applying pressure to his wound. They were going to give him stitches (which he'd have to rip out himself, later, and hope nobody noticed) and pain medication (which wouldn't do shit, but would allow him to pretend to be asleep, so he wasn't complaining there).

That's how he ended up in the medbay with Tony, when Natasha left him to return to the fight, after making sure he was in good hands. Cleaned him up, pumped him with some OxyCotin (he'd burn through it in ten minutes). They thought he was asleep, and wheeled him into the same room. Peter waited until the staff filtered out, depositing him and fussing with Tony's machines, before opening his eyes and glancing at Tony. He looked a lot worse in actual light, but Peter figured he probably did, too.

It was safe there - Peter couldn't sense anything that wasn't - and finally allowed himself to relax. Okay. Good. He could get through this and go home and it would be fine. Tony's heartbeat was still weak, but less erratic than it had been when he was running on pure will, and Peter felt better knowing he'd be okay. He closed his eyes, lightly dozing listening to the whirr of Tony's machines and the thump thump of his heart. Peter just hoped nobody tried to take any blood from him, or the precarious position he was in would come tumbling down around him.

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It was easy to just let go the moment that he was safe. Maybe he should have tried to stay awake, but he really just couldn't. He was too tired, too drained, in too much pain. The painkillers helped him block out everything that was going on as the medics stabilized him, cleaned him up, and stitched him up, which was just a good thing overall. Between the gunshot wounds, the burn on his chest, and the old injuries from the punishment sessions he endured for months, his body was an overall mess and he would have probably snapped at someone the moment he saw the look on their faces when they found the scars throughout his body.

At some point, though, the painkillers began to wear off. His body tensed as he prepared to open his eyes, too disorientated for a moment to even remember where he was or what had happened, but slowly the sounds filtered in. The heart monitors, the sound of voices speaking as the doctors walked out of the medbay, and that was when he began to remember the escape. He was out. He was...free? His eyes slowly opened, and that was when he finally realized that he wasn't really dreaming. He was hooked up to an IV, he could feel the heart monitor. The bandages, the sling his arm was in, he nasal cannula. His chest felt like an elephant had sat on it before someone set it on fire, but he tried to ignore the sensation as he used his free hand to pull the cannula away from his nose.

It... Shit, how long had he been out for?

The thought was dismissed, though, because he couldn't just ignore the relief at the fact that he wasn't waking up in a cell anymore. He wasn't being shocked awake, either, and he looked off to the side as if to see who was around.

And that was when he saw Peter. It felt good to realize that he had been real, that he hadn't been hallucinating how he had imagined that he had been, and he let out a sigh under his breath. "Hey, kid."

Peter's body had settled into a bone-deep ache as it tried to heal, but there was only so much his biology could do without food to fuel it. And he would need to sit down and properly eat to jumpstart his healing, which he wasn't going to do because he wasn't going to say a single word to anybody he didn't have to. Survival strategy. Point was, he was just lying there, pretending to be fully asleep whenever a doctor came by to check on them, and studiously ignoring the pain he was in. It was all he could do, really.

Tony's breathing picked up, from slumber to waking, and Peter opened his eyes, blinking owlishly at him. Tony looked like Hell warmed over; Peter could see the fading scars underneath an assortment of bruises from here. Peter was glad there was no mirror around to take stock of his own condition.

"Ah, sleeping beauty finally wakes." Peter offered a toothy smile, resting his head back in the pillow. It eased some of the building panic, seeing that Tony was awake. Peter wasn't alone in an unfamiliar place, for the moment. "Seriously, though, expected you to be out longer. They gave you some top notch stuff. How you feeling?"

None of the Avengers had been by yet, though Peter was sure it was only a matter of time. They had a whole bunker to clear out, though. He wondered, idly, if any of the other captives had survived. What would happen to them? Assumedly, they had families to return to as well, but they weren't all Americans like them, were they? This was a global operation. It only worried him, the more he thought about it, but at least they'd made it out. Against every fuckin' odd.

The sleeping beauty comment made a smirk tug at his lips, and he felt himself relax even if it was marginally. It was really good to see Peter again, and to know that he had been real, and he was okay. They were both alive and, even if Tony felt like absolute shit right now and could barely move in order to keep the pain at bay, that annoying beeping on the heart monitor at least reminded him that he was really alive.

"Mm, I don't think they gave me the really good stuff, probably just enough to tie me over." Either that, or he was just in that much pain. At this point it was really hard to tell, really. It was hard to figure out considering that just breathing was causing the pain on his chest to expand through him.

Instead of focusing on himself, though, he tried to focus on Peter. He was awake and talking, so that was good. That was really good. The kid himself looked like - well, like he had also walked out of Hell, and Tony's expression grew a little serious with concern. "How about you, you alright?"

Are you healing?, he almost asked, but now that he was alert and lucid... Had he dreamt that, or had that part been real, too?

"Want me to sneak you some of mine?" He really will, too. What? It's not like Peter's using the stuff. Just metabolizing it, like that's going to help anything. He'd be better off with two bottles of vodka but whatever, he's on opioids. "Double the IV, takes effect faster. I'm no doctor but I could probably find your vein."

"I'm fine." Peter offered a little wave, though he didn't life his arm much, with the bullet wound. "Seriously, it's not that bad. I'm not even bleeding." He turned just enough to show off the clean white bandage they'd put over the stitches of his graze wound. "It's all good."

"We look terrible," Peter snorted, fingers playing nervously over the bedsheets. He was struck with a sudden homesickness for Aunt May. God, she must have been so worried. How's he going to explain all of this? Will Tony out him? Is it bad if Peter hoped on some level, Tony was too tired to? "I mean, really. Are the bags under your eyes Prada?"

The offer actually made Tony chuckle. Which was a horrible, terrible idea with how his chest hurt, but it didn't stop him from smiling anyway even if his features tightened at the edges. "How are you going to explain that when they come back in?"

At Peter's wave, Tony's eyes glanced towards his shoulder before they drifted down to the bandage of the graze wound. Okay, that was good. He really was healing. He was okay, and Tony gave a small nod. "Good."

Settling against his pillows, he tried to take a slow deep breath. "Excuse you, they're Gucci," he deadpanned. "Everything else is Prada, though."

"I've been pretending to sleep for the past several hours, They needn't know." Peter was already popping out his IV cord, 100% serious about passing it off to Tony. "I'm just gonna 'sleep' the whole way home." He still wasn't sure who all these people even were. Did the Avengers have their own med team?

Peter started to shift, to get up off the bed and grab the medicine rack by his bed, to push it over to Tony. Peter estimated he'd be healed by four days from then at the very latest.

"My mistake." Peter pretended to apologize sincerely, though his grin kind of gave him away. "Wait, are you mixing brands? Shame on you! I'm all Coach all the way. Loyalty."

"They really haven't realized you're awake?" Which probably shouldn't surprise him. The Avengers had field agents that helped them out on certain missions, including a medical team, thanks to Maria Hill. He still didn't fully trust on their competency level, and the way he asked probably proved that.

Reaching over for the medicine rack, Tony did his best to get a hold of it and bring it closer, but...ugh, too much effort. Seriously, if radiation exposure was supposed to give him superpowers, they were failing him right now and he hated it. Although he really just wanted to ride out a good wave of numbness that the painkillers could give him, so that was a good motivator.

"Coach? No. I'd rather have no loyalty, thanks." He adjusted his position on the bed and smirked over to Peter. "Besides, I do have loyalty. To my Italian side. It's not my fault we have so many to choose from."

"They gave me enough to put me out for several hours, so they weren't really checking." Peter shrugged, not nearly as bothered by it. They'd taken care of his wounds, so they couldn't really be that bad, right? And Tony was in a fairly stable condition, all things considered.

When Tony couldn't reach it, Peter stifled a wince and got up out of the bed, stretching out sore limbs and crossing the distances with the medicine. He offered the needle to Tony, leaning against the railing of his bed so his legs didn't fail him. "I promise I don't have anything."

"What's wrong with Coach?" Because haha whoops, the last Christmas gift he bought May was a Coach purse. "You know, I gotta be honest, I've run out of designers that I know."

Tony was ready to tell Peter that he really didn't need to get up, but before he could even manage, the kid was already doing it. "Ehh, no offense, but I'm just gonna do this." Since he couldn't really move the arm where he had been shot in his shoulder all that much, he used the mobility he could to unhook the needle piece of the IV line before replacing it with his own. It took some doing, but if Peter was still being pumped with drugs, at least his IV would hopefully have something to erase the edge that he was feeling and it would help him breathe a little easier.

"Thanks, kid," Tony said sincerely. Now that he was awake, he pushed the button for his bed so that he could sit up a little, but was sure to not overdo it. All the movement he was doing was already making him a little dizzy, but he tried to ignore the sensation.

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with it," he continued with the banter, "it's just not my thing."

He turned to Peter, watching him for a moment before his expression turned a little serious. "So, I gotta ask. If you've just been 'asleep,' then no one has gotten a chance to ask you anything about what happened?"

The drugs would benefit Tony better than they would benefit Peter anyway. They were nothing more than a little tickle at the edges of his healing, and honestly? It was slowing down his healing more than anything else since his metabolism had to keep burning through the drugs.

Peter leaned against the wall next to Tony's bed, taking the time to stretch out his back and any tense joints. "Please tell me you don't own a pair of snakeskin boots."

Peter met Tony's gaze evenly. "No, they haven't. I don't think the medics knew what to ask and none of your team have come around yet."

The drugs were definitely helping. They weren't strong enough to knock him out or even dull out the pain completely, but it was at least taking away enough of an edge to help him breathe a little easier.

"God, no." Just the idea made Tony huff out a small chuckle under his breath, even if it hurt to do so. It felt good to laugh at something, though, without the fear that it would make his captors suddenly show up.

Which...now that he was out, it felt a little surreal to think about it. Even if it was hard to figure out what part was harder to believe - the fact that he was out, or that he had actually been living in Hell for months just hours ago.

Meeting Peter's gaze, he stayed quiet for a moment. "What...are you going to tell them? About what happened."

God only knows how Tony had survived. Was sheer force of will enough to sustain him? The device in his chest should have been enough to kill him, especially with prolonged exposure like that. Peter would surely be turning it over in his head for a while, but then, that's the sort of thing he did.

"Alligator?" Peter even cracked a smile, when Tony laughed. It would take a bit for the adrenaline to completely leave his system, but they were safe. It was okay to joke and relax a little.

That question had Peter shifting his weight nervously, chewing on his thumb absent-mindedly. The real question was, what was Tony going to tell them? Peter had revealed his powers and he couldn't exactly take it back. Even if some things could be explained away by Tony being in no state to remember things properly, they still inexplicably escaped. "...is pleading the fifth an option?"

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