femmejosephine | Patching Tony Up

Entry tags:

tony stark

Patching Tony Up - August 24

Honestly, she loved being an EMT. It let her use some of the skills Section had taught her but in a way that actually helped people instead of hurting them. And yeah, she didn't mind the adrenaline rush she got from working to stabilize someone who'd fallen off a building or gotten bit by a vampire or hit by a car. It was a good use of an adrenaline rush, not a bad one.

She also loved being a restaurant owner, though, and she was working hard to balance the two. It helped that she had a good new waitress in Debora. That girl knew how to handle customers, good and bad. It meant Nikita didn't worry too much about what would happen when she was working a shift at the hospital or recovering from it.

Today was the day after a recovery day, and so she was at the restaurant checking on things and hopefully doing a little paperwork. She glanced up when the front door opened only to see Tony Stark in front of her looking pitiful and injured.

Oh, this was going to be a good story. She could tell already.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tony tried to give Nikita what amounted to an innocent shrug. He grimaced afterward, having stretched the slash of a wound across his bicep, still sluggishly oozing blood onto his thankfully black tee.

It needed stitches, and he knew he needed medical attention to get them. He knew where he could buy antibiotics without a prescription, but not the skill to stitch his own arm.

He cradled one arm in the other. He sucked in a breath.

"Yeah, hi. Don't mean to show up to bother you at work, but I could really use you for you know? Please?"

Fortunately, it was sort of a slow time between the lunch and dinner rush, which meant she wasn't going to be leaving one of her waitresses in the weeds to deal with this. And she had to deal with it, because otherwise they were about five feet from a health code violation.

"Do I even want to know what you did to yourself this time?" she asked as she got up from her paperwork and motioned for him to follow her back behind the register and into her closet of an office.

Tony did his best to smile at Nikita even more broadly. He followed close on her heels, glad enough to be away from the front of the restaurant. The last thing he needed was a photo of him bleeding in front of the counter to make its way into the news or social media. Bad for him, probably worse for Nikita which was again, bad for him.

"Tried to stop a mugging. Brought a repulsor to a knife fight. As it turns out, I'm bad at knifey-knifey."

The office was tiny, and Tony quickly found a chair and dragged himself into it. He was putting up a good front, but the pain was bad, and he was exhausted.

"Just ... hospital would have asked too many questions."

"I can see that," she agreed blandly, and didn't point out any number of ways he could improve his odds of actually stopping a mugging. She wasn't supposed to know any of that.

Fortunately for him, she had purchased her own EMT-level first aid kit. It had been expensive, but she had decided it would pay for itself in a place where glasses and plates got dropped, knives got fumbled, and apparently, geniuses came for patching up.

"Yeah, probably would have wanted you to fill out paperwork, and next thing you know you're in the news for something other than whatever you're going to change the world with next," she agreed as she put on a pair of gloves and got out an alcohol wipe. She needed to clean and assess the wound before she decided how to treat it.

"Probably don't need to tell you this is going to sting."

"I think you're joking, but I definitely want to avoid that. I get to play with my big boy toys because I don't break the wrong rules or too often, and I'm content with that. I end up shuffled to the psych floor because I clearly have a death wish, it's going to make doing my own thing a memory."

He wrinkled his brow in preparation. It was going to hurt. He was used to hurting. But he didn't think the sting of papercuts or wound cleaning ever got any better. Head trauma? Bruised kidneys? Those, you could get used to.

Tony peeled back the arm of his tee, shredded, to help her. He was pretty sure he was just in the way, but he'd already committed to it.

He was trying to help, and she appreciated it, so she smiled just a little as she swept the alcohol wipe over the wound. It wasn't too long or deep, which was a good thing. He'd probably just gotten glanced, really, rather than stabbed or slashed. A few stitches and he'd be fine. Maybe not even a few stitches depending on how stoic he wanted to try to be.

"Well, the problem with not going to hospital in this case is that I don't have any anesthetics other than topical ones, so this is going to hurt like hell if I try to stitch it."

"I can take it," Tony said to her, giving Nikita a flat-mouthed, thin-lipped look that was only a little too serious. Because Tony was not actually ready to guarantee he could take it.

Not without whining about it, at least.

He wasn't, after all, exactly a Steve Rogers. That was fine.

"You do what you need to do. I just don't want to leave a paper trail with this kind of thing. It looks bad, I know from experience. Way too much experience. I like what I do. I don't want to stop doing it."

She had a bit of experience with avoiding a paper trail, along with a fondness for it, and it was possible Tony had figured that out. It was also possible he hadn't. Either way, she wasn't going to confirm or deny it.

"Right then," she replied, and got out the lidocaine cream to spread along the borders of the cut.

"Give that a couple of minutes to take effect and then we'll see about stitching it up."

Tony's mouth twitched at the lidocaine. It had a little sting to it at first, like alcohol did, but soon enough feeling started to dull. He always disliked the way lidocaine felt, the way you could feel pressure but not a lot else. It was unsettling.

"So you end up having to do this a lot? Or is it just little old me? Because at this point, I should probably put you on some kind of secret payroll or something."

She would honestly deserve it, too. With weird men showing up at her workplace, needing assistance at any time of night.

"Mostly for my waitresses," she replied easily. "And you, of course. But I've got two jobs already. Don't really need a third."

She got a sterile, pre-threaded needle package, then checked to be sure there actually was suture thread in the needle. A couple of them had come with just the needle, which was not as helpful.

"I think this'll be just a couple of stitches and maybe some skin glue. Ready?"

Tony laughed at and you, of course, and then grimaced at the lingering alcohol sting.

He braced himself for the needle. It would hurt, but it wouldn't be an unfamiliar hurt.

"Remind me to send you just the biggest damn wine basket for Christmas this year."

His eyes were honest, despite the joke.

"I don't know good wine from bad, so that might be wasted on me," she said lightly. It wasn't quite true. Section had taught her to know any number of things for missions, and wine quality was one of them. But it wasn't something she should know since her general persona was firmly working-class, so it wasn't something she seemed to know.

She started stitching without any further warnings since anticipation could honestly be worse than the actual pain of the needle. She tied a neat knot in the first suture and snipped the ends, then went to the next stitch.

"Ow," Tony complained when she was suddenly stitching. But he didn't move or pull his arm away. He fought with the urge to reach out and rub at the wound and the fresh stitch. If he touched, he'd probably get a swat, and he'd deserve it.

"Here's the secret. Nobody actually knows good wine from bad. I mean, sure, if you've tasted that particular wine before, you can recognize it. But other than that, the good stuff, the crap stuff, there's not a lot of difference. But it would be the good stuff. I want you to know that. I would give you the good stuff."

"So all those people who pretend to talk about the, I dunno, oak undernotes or whatever are just being pretentious? Should have figured rich people would be pretentious," she said. Tony was rich, or at least rich in Darrow terms, even if he didn't have the same kind of money he'd had before. It didn't change whether she thought rich people were pretentious. She remembered the Section-ordered parties where she was just decoration for some warlord or politician, not to mention that bastard Alec Chandler. He'd been pretentious and a total scumbag.

She put in the second stitch, then gently palpated the ends of the cut, trying to decide if it would be a good idea to put in a couple more just in case.

Tony grimaced and banged a fist a few times, gently enough not to break anything or upset any stacks of business papers, on the desk beside him.

"I mean, I'm sure they have themselves convinced that the wine has oak and peach undertones. Whether that matches up with objective reality, maybe not, but damn they get paid well. You're right, though. Rich people are pretentious. Just look at me, right? Basically just one giant pretense. Not even an actual person."

"People convince themselves of a lot of things," she agreed, which sounded a little like a cynical fortune cookie. Cynical fortune cookies were her kind of fortune cookies.

For a second it looked like his banging fist was going to take a stack of tax paperwork over, but it didn't. It probably would have actually improved the organization of the paperwork if it'd gone off the desk.

One more stitch, just to be on the safe side, and she quickly stitched, knotted, and cut.

"Had a friend once who was big into socialism and being a hippie. And he liked gadgets too. It'd be fun to put you two into a room and see if you save the world or destroy it."

It was very cynical, and Tony tilted his head, thinking of nothing so much as Natasha.

Once she was done, Tony had the urge to scratch at the sutured wound. He sat on his hands to avoid the temptation, lest he ruin Nikita's work.

"Hey. Don't make fun. I've totally saved the world before. At least once. So anything is possible."

He gave Nikita a very serious look.

She got out the skin glue and sealed the edges on either side of the stitches, then fanned her hand over the glue to help it heal faster. She did chuckle at Tony sitting on his hands without any prompting from her, though.

"And I didn't even have to warn you to keep your hands to yourself," she noted. If she'd used a different tone, that might have been flirty, but instead it was just slightly amused.

"Have you? Well, good for you."

"Good for you."

Tony gave a snort, because it seemed very patronizing, and it probably was, but also, he deserved it, and he couldn't prove it.

"I guess I should at least do you the -- arguable -- kindness of sticking around and ordering fifty dollars worth of food and mixed drinks to make up for your time."

He could use the drink, actually. And a sandwich.

"You can if you want to, but you don't have to. I think Phil's table is open, unless someone's claimed it in the last few minutes."

Phil had been gone for months, but it was still Phil's table. Maybe it should be called Tony's table now, but it wasn't. It was Phil's.

She taped a gauze bandage securely over the stitches to keep them clean and dry.

"Do I need to give you the wound care lecture or can I assume you've heard and ignored it a few times already?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Patching Tony Up - August 24

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject