Tony Stark didn't usually concern himself with small-time villains. He didn't have the time or bandwidth for it with everything he had to do with SI and the Accords, and even with trying to keep a certain Spiderling alive and well. But when someone started messing with the Tower, (and inconveniencing his day) you bet he was breaking out the suit and dealing with it.
Which is how he found himself taking out a small contingent of (shoddily constructed) giant grey lizard robots on a random Wednesday afternoon. Seriously, what was the goal here? From what he could tell, they were mostly stomping around, ruining the sidewalks, and using their giant tails to take chunks out of the bottom stories of the surrounding buildings. Including Stark Tower, which is how Tony became aware of them. He had already taken down several of the monstrosities, and was working on piling them in some sort of order that didn't shut down Manhattan transportation for the rest of the day.
They seemed to finally be recognizing him as something that was interrupting their directive though, (whatever that was) and were starting to target him. No problem. That way he didn't have to chase them. He hefted the torso of one of the defunct lizards, then went high with it, hoping for several of them to converge under him. If he could crush a couple into the ground at once, he could wrap this up more quickly.
"FRIDAY, gimme a little oomph," he directed and catapulted ground-wards, holding the torso ahead of him like a bloated knight's lance. Just before he made contact, crushing three other lizards between the inert chunk of robot and the ground, he thought he saw a flash of color under one of them, and saw sunlight shining off something white, stringy, and familiar. But it was too late to counteract the inertia, and his aim was true. Three (and a half) destroyed lizards were now crumpled together under him.
"FRI, was that what I think it was?" Tony wheezed, panic starting to set in.
"If you're asking if Spiderman was down there webbing up the now-destroyed lizard's legs at impact, then analysis of my footage would say you're correct." For an AI, she sounded quite worried.
"Status, FRI! Can you pick him up?" Tony shouted, trying not to completely freak out. He knew the super-powered teen could take hits, but that was a really big one. He'd powered it himself.
"I detect his heartbeat, boss. It's fast, but strong."
Tony started carefully pulling up pieces of the wreckage, shifting them to the side one by one until he finally got a glimpse of red. As he removed the last lizard carcass, he finally let out a breath as the form that had been between it and the ground lurched to its feet, stumbling towards him. Tony landed hard and was out of his suit as fast as it would move out of his way. He steadied the young superhero, visually inspecting him for injuries. He saw some slight damage to the suit right away, but nothing was obviously impaled or broken. His breathing was shallow and fast, and his white Spiderman eyes seemed a little wild.
He put a supporting arm around Spiderman, trying to decide if he should move him to safety before or after FRIDAY's analysis. (That she'd better already be working on, given her protective protocols in place for the teen.)
"Kid," Tony breathed. "What are you doing here, and why didn't you let me know you were on site?"
"Mr. Stark?" He sounded winded and confused. "I… I was just coming in for lab time, when I saw you fightin' those guys. Didn't want to distrac' you, 'cause you'd maybe get hurt. But then I was stuck under them. That was scary. Kinda like-"
The remaining robots were converging. When Tony removed his supporting arm from the boy, unintentionally cutting him off, to give his suit room to reactivate, Peter stumbled again and nearly went down. He caught Peter mid fall. "FRI, is it safe to move him?"
"In short, yes, Boss. But he does have injuries."
"Anything life-threatening, or can I stick him out of reach while I deal with these guys?"
"Nothing life-threatening."
That's all Tony needed to hear. He scooped the masked teen into his arms, wincing at the sound of pain the boy made, and blasted them both up to the roof of the closest building. Unless the lizards sprouted wings, he'd be safe there for the ten minutes Tony estimated he'd need to mop up down below. He set Peter gently against an air conditioning unit. The mask's eyes seemed to be stuck in a permanent wince, and he had some muscle control, so he was still conscious. Bad for pain, but good for Tony's peace of mind.
"FRIDAY, is Karen okay? How about his suit diagnostics?"
"Both functioning, Boss."
"Great. Keep an eye on him, let me know if anything looks concerning. And you ," he started, gently pulling the boy's mask up over his eyes so he could breathe better, and opening own mask so he could make eye contact. " You had better not move a muscle. Do you understand, Spiderling? Stay down, stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Am I in trouble?" Well, based on the different sizes of his pupils, yes. He was definitely concussed, which most people would consider trouble. "No, Pete," he said more softly. "But you will be if you don't listen to me," he said, eyebrows raised. "Right?" He brushed a metallic thumb gently down the boy's cheek.
"Yes, sir." Peter let his head lean back, and didn't look like he was going anywhere, hopefully.
Tony ran a few feet then leaped off the side of the building, so as not to affect Peter when activating his repulsors. Newly motivated, and honestly pretty pissed, he made short work of the remaining robots. Like a good-citizen-superhero he took an extra five minutes to pile and stack all the wreckage somewhere they would cause the least amount of chaos, and then high-tailed it back to his kid. Who, somewhat surprisingly, was still exactly where he left him.
He landed and knelt next to the teenager. "Still with me, kiddo?"
"Mmmph. Barely," the boy said. He'd removed his mask completely and it was crumpled in his lap. "Hurts," he hissed.
"Yeah, I'll bet. FRIDAY, give me the rundown."
"Peter is heavily concussed, has nine cracked ribs, a broken wrist, hairline fractures in his radius and ulna of the same arm, and has a broken clavicle. The blunt force trauma has also caused deep bruising. No internal bleeding detected."
"Aw, kid. Those ribs are going to be miserable. Let's get the worst of it over with and get you to Medbay though, okay? At least it's a short flight this time."
Peter sighed and nodded. He pulled his mask back on awkwardly with his one good hand. There was a high chance of being seen by civilians while en route. Tony carefully scooped him up, wincing in sympathy at Peter's sharp intake of breath as he was unavoidably jostled.
"You've got to stop breaking ribs, bud. Can we start working on a 3-month record or something after this? How about I buy you that new Star Wars LEGO set you've been drooling over if you make it 3 months after this, hmm?" He was totally going for distraction, but was amused when Peter kind of perked up.
"Really? That would be awesome." He was silent for a moment, thinking it over. "What if I just crack a couple, and they're not actually broken?" he negotiated.
"Nope. No breaks, cracks, or hairline fractures, or you don't qualify. These aren't actually broken, but they still hurt like they were, right?"
"Yeah," he admitted with a slight wheeze.
Tony landed carefully on the penthouse balcony and set Peter down gently. The boy still grunted in discomfort. "FRI, let medical know we're coming, and give them today's laundry list."
Once Peter had been cleared to leave Medbay, Tony gave him some choices.
"Well, you're screenless and supposed to rest for the rest of the day and tomorrow. Luckily school doesn't start until next week, I guess. Where do you want to set up? Your room? The living room? You want me to take you home?"
"May's working. Can I maybe stay? And lay on the workshop couch?"
"Hmm. Well, I don't see why not. But you have to stay down, and I'm pretty sure messing with the holo tables counts as screen time."
"Ugh. It's so boring , Mr. Stark. I hate concussions."
"Keep that in mind, maybe, and make better choices," Tony grumbled as they walked. By the way, other than not wanting to distract me, what exactly was the thought process you had going that involved not telling me you were onsite?"
"I dunno. I just figured you'd see me, eventually, and then you'd connect our comms, I guess."
"Did it occur to you to ask Karen to connect?"
"Not really. Like I said, I didn't want to startle you."
Tony eyed him skeptically. "Didn't want to startle me, or didn't want me to tell you to back off and stay safe?"
"Maybe a little bit of the second one," Peter muttered after a short pause, eyes down to the side. At least the kid was being honest-ish with him in the aftermath.
"Peter, I know you can handle yourself. Especially with something like those robots. I wouldn't have warned you off, especially since I was there to keep an eye on things."
Peter's eyes flared with something like pride. "Really? We haven't really worked on anything like that together, like in our suits. I didn't think you'd let me help."
Tony gave the boy a mildly exasperated look.
"I was hoping I could show you I could take some of them down before you had a chance to send me to the Tower or something."
"Of all people, I know how capable you are. I don't like to think about how irresponsible it was, but who was it who sicced you on Captain America, huh?"
"You," Peter said with a small grin. They'd arrived in the workshop, and Tony turned to settle his hand on Peter's shoulder, looking him in the eye.
"Your abilities are amazing, Pete. You could use more training, and practice, but I truly believe that someday you'll be the best of us." Peter flushed slightly and smiled awkwardly, glancing down at his shoes. "But only ," Tony paused, waiting for the boy to resume eye contact, "if you keep from getting yourself killed in the meantime. And yes, sometimes that will mean following my lead and listening when I decide you need to tap out."
Peter frowned at that, but Tony jiggled his shoulder playfully, finally eliciting a small smile. "Can you trust me, please?"
I'll try," Peter said, sighing.
"I'll take it," Tony gestured for the boy to pull out the pillows and blankets and get settled. "Now go close those big brown eyes of yours and get some rest. You want an audiobook?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Peter said, sounding very martyr-ish as he laid down on the couch.
"FRI, play where we left off in 'The Horse and His Boy.'"
"Aw, I wanted to keep listening to 'The Hunger Games,' Peter nearly-whined.
"Yeah, but I don't feel like my concussed kid having nightmares, rolling off the couch, and hitting his head again."
"That's a little dramatic, don't you think?" Peter asked dryly as the narrator's voice filled the workshop.
"You should know by now that I'm nothing if not dramatic."
Peter's smirked in agreement right before he yawned massively.
Tony walked over to the couch, and turned his phone on with his left hand to check e-mails while letting his right hand rest on Peter's head, gently rubbing his scalp and tugging softly on locks of hair as he went. Peter hummed in appreciation of the sensations.
Tony glanced over just in time to see his eyes flutter closed, and he smiled to himself. He gave it about five minutes. The kid always got extra tired when he was trying to heal. Also extra hungry. He'd eaten in Medbay, but Tony needed to have FRIDAY put in a big dinner order for after the recovering Spider's nap.
When the kid was fully asleep, Tony went over to work on some coding.
"FRI, honey, want to explain to me why you didn't tell me when Peter's suit was active so close to us?"
She matched his volume level so as not to wake the baby superhero. "It registered, but I don't have any protocol attached to that, and we were fully occupied fighting the lizard robots, Boss. It didn't show up as a priority notification to push through to you."
"Hmm. I see. Well, let's fix that," he said, adding several lines of code to the giant file that was FRIDAY over the next few minutes. It was gratifying to see how much bigger it was, visually and terabyte-wise than it had been when he'd first activated her during Ultron. The corners of his mouth turned down. As happy as he was with her progress, the events that necessitated her coming online definitely sobered him. He never thought of his lost AI (and friend) without sadness.
After he finished adding the new "Peter is Always the Priority" protocol, he added some more code.
"Hey FRI, what I'm putting in right now is something called the "Instant Connection" protocol. Anytime Peter and I are both in our suits and within range of each other, I want an automatic comms link unless one of us asks you to disable that function temporarily. Can you do that for me?"
"Of course, Boss."
Tony pulled his glasses off and rubbed at his eyes. What if he had accidentally blasted Peter because he didn't realize he was there? The kid was crazy resilient, but still… it actually probably wouldn't have done any more damage than smashing the teen between a robot and the ground. If it had hit at a slightly different angle today…
Tony couldn't continue that line of thought. It made him sick to his stomach. He glanced back at the kid, who was still sound asleep.
"FRIDAY, start new project." He'd already been working on the specs for a fully-nanotech suit for himself. It was time to start designing one simultaneously for his favorite neighborhood Spiderman. Tony knew there was still big trouble out there, and somehow he didn't think he'd be able to keep Peter out of it completely. He needed to build the kid something a little sturdier for if, and when, that trouble came knocking.