STARK BEANS OMG HE TOTALLY WOULD

itsallavengers:

It starts out bc he finds a lil kitty curled up on the hood of his car.

He has no idea how or why it got there. But it’s… it’s tiny, and it’s black as night and curled in on itself like a lump of dark matter against the striking red of his Ferrari. He cocks his head and scritches the top of its teeny little head, and when the kitty wakes up, he realises that it’s holding its leg all funny. The poor thing is obviously a stray, and there’s something wrong with its back paw.

Pepper is going to kill him for being late to that meeting, but come on– this kitten obviously needs his help.

So he heads in the complete opposite direction of the meeting rooms he was supposed to be driving to, and instead goes to the nearest vet, the little kitten curling back up, this time in his lap. He makes sure not to move around too much, so as not to hurt it more. Unfortunately, however, when the vet looks her over, he tells Tony solemnly that the leg is too badly damaged to heal on its own, and if they wanted to help her they’d either have to amputate or just put her to sleep.

Tony checks his watch. He’s already thirty minutes late- might as well go the whole way and just miss the meeting entirely.

The kitten stays over at the vets whilst Tony throws a load of money at the person he’d been speaking to and tells him to do the best job he can with the operation, and when he goes home, he instantly claps his hands and signals for JARVIS to start a new database.

JARVIS makes a wry comment at the ‘Stark Beans’ decision, but fuck him, Tony thinks it is absolutely fitting. 

It takes him six hours to come up with the perfect design. It’s tiny and barely even uses any materials at all, but it’s flexible and lightweight and the kitty is hardly even going to notice the difference when it’s on. He puts a small rubber paw on the end- soft and durable, and fit like the real thing, and on the back of it he stamps the smallest little StarkIndustries logo on it he’s ever created.

And thus, Stark Beans™

are born.

He saves the project and sends it off to Pepper, telling her that he’s terribly sorry, but this needs to take priority now, I’m going to save all the cats in the world with this. And then once that’s done, he gets in the car and drives back to the vets.

Needless to say, it’s an instant success. 

The Stark Beans™

are put into practise almost immediately. They fast become the best thing on the market. Tony expands a little, making some for the canine counterparts too (Stark Paws™), and suddenly he has a whole market of prosthetic limbs for disabled pets. His favourite part is seeing the little boys and girls that end up running up to him, toothy smiles and sunlit eyes and fists with pictures of their puppy’s new leg and their cat’s new paw. They’re so happy. He made them happy in the space of an afternoon, because of the little kitten who sat herself on his hood and took a nap.

Of course, he keeps her. She came home with him as soon as the new limb was fitted. She was like the tiniest shadow in the galaxy; the only thing that gave away her position in the darkness was the single white paw of her Stark Bean™.

Fittingly, he named her nebula.
(Well- technically her name was Horsehead, due to the fact that it was the most famous dark nebula he could think of and at the time he’d thought it was hilarious- but Pepper had quickly put a halt to him yelling out ‘HORSEHEAD NO!’ In the middle of the office when everyone else was working.)

So yes. Nebula. Excellent model for his tech. Even better lab partner. But the best part about her was definitely her little purr when he scratched under her chin

---

AO3 /// buy me a kofi!