Adopted by the Avengers

19: Excelsior

2 weeks later

The chest plate for the aquatic Iron Man wetsuit had just gotten a new tweaking, thanks to Parker, and shined like a Banff lake. 

"It's beautiful!" Peter said in awe, holding it up to the light above. He was admiring his work. You would too if you had stayed up until three in the morning, your hands stained with grease and stiff, kept alive by McDonald's and fear of nightmares. 

Peter reached for his McMuffin, taking off a chunk and popping it into his mouth. He sighed and plunked into a spinney chair, twirling to Tony's direction. The older man was hunched over his desk, eyes unblinking and concentrated on something in his hands. 

"I'm McTired," Peter confessed. 

"Go to sleep then," Tony mumbled, not looking up. He didn't like Tony's answer. Peter wanted to complain and have attention. That wasn't fulfilling his needs. 

But then Peter saw his eyes do a long blink, and smirked. "You're McTired too." 

"Shh.." 

"Go to sleeeepp go to sleeepp go to sleep tiny tony..." 

Tony said in response "Can you come here for a sec? Need your help on somethin'." 

"Okay," Peter sighed, standing up, but falling back into his chair. Gravity, you know? He rolled over to him instead. "Alright, give me the beets." 

Tony explained it and even Peter struggled with the answer. 

"You mean we can only have either Ice Cream or Gummy Worms on our next patrol? Why not both?" 

Ever since Peter had gotten out of the MDU, Tony had offered to be officially, Spider-Man's mentor, and go out on patrols with him. Teach him of the world and all that. So far they'd been out solely once, and unfortunately not more because right now there was a lot of meeting Tony had to attend to. The accord signing is coming up and that means loads of government officials, Wakandan visits, and a possible trip in the next few months or so to Vienna. 

Urgh. Life of a superhero billionaire. 

"Because you don't want to get cramps and stuff and it isn't healthy," Tony answered.

 Peter made duck-lips and replied with disdain, "Healthy smealthshy. But fine. Hm... What do you think?" 

"Well," Tony started, "The dairy in the Ice Cream gives strong bones, but it can also upset your stomach and give freeze brains, and the gummy worms are 90% sugar, which will give you loads of energy- maybe too much, actually," he admitted. He sighed. "Then you'd crash from the sugar high and fall to your death... so how about we stick to the protein bars." 

"But those taste like I'm eating very chewy peanut butter I can barely swallow it and it'll take twenty minutes for the stuff to get out," Peter pouted, rolling away from the man into the center of the lab workspace. He let out a loud and exaggerated sigh mixed with a groan and slunk down, and then he was sliding off of the chair to his knees, then stomach. 

"m' just gonna sleep r'ere." He mumbled into the cold cement. He closed his eyes. Woah. Okay, maybe he was a lot more tired than he originally thought. 

"There's a couch over there, you can sleep on that instead of the floor." 

"mm." 

Peter didn't move.

Tony sighed and rubbed his face. He was exhausted too. "Want me to carry you to your room?" 

"hm."