st_arkintern | (no subject)

(no subject)

"Are you really unhappy here?"

Peter's question cut through the relative silence of the woods, which he and Tony were surveying together. If Liz hadn't brought it up to him, he probably wouldn't have noticed, but now, it felt like he was looking for it in every one of Tony's words and in every one of Tony's movements.

It felt like something he should have noticed first, but the two of them hadn't spent much time together ever since he and Alec were fighting in the bar. He wondered if he had made Tony mad, but that wasn't a conversation for now.

Maybe later, but not now. Peter was ready to cut through one issue at a time.

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"Pete," Peter says, nodding. "Mr. Star-Lord calls me Pete. I like it."

"Too much, too fast?" Tony read Peter like a book, moving right along with their path. "Don't worry about it. It'll come as it comes."

"No," Peter insists. "I really do like it. If you want to call me Pete, call me Pete."

He does like it. After Quill started calling him Pete, he somehow felt more secure in their friendship, like they had achieved some level of camaraderie where nicknames (was this a nickname? Peter wasn't sure) were not only appropriate, but also standard.

Tony shrugged. "You have to graduate from "kid" eventually."

'Mr. Stark might be forever, though.'

"I still don't think I'm a kid," Peter says, somewhat indignantly. "I'm sixteen now. Sixteen is not a kid."

"You're right." Tony agreed, wonder of wonders.

Peter's head spins so he can look at Tony and verify with his eyes that he heard correctly.

"What?"

"You're not a boy, not yet a man. Like the Britney Spears song, right?" Tony snapped his fingers. "Graduation day! You've evolved into a young man. Or a young buck, because we're woodsy right now."

Peter blinks up at Tony, brows furrowed. He really has no idea what Tony's talking about.

"Who's Britney Spears?"

"Oh Good Lord." Tony made a pained, groaning noise. Wasn't Peter Parker a pop culture savvy kid, or did that only extend to specific decades? "Never you mind, young buck."

Peter's not entirely sure how he feels about the nickname young buck, but it's better than kid, and the familiarity --

Well, the familiarity was nice. Like Quill calling him Pete.

"Does anyone ever give you nicknames?" he asks.

Tony cleared his throat, giving a little hop over a fallen log.

"The Starkster. Robot Wunderkid. The Da Vinci of Our Time--ridiculous, by the way, I don't paint." He counted off on his fingers. "Merchant of Death. My personal favorite is Metal Man for, uh, reasons."

Peter jumps on top the log and stands on top of it as Tony trails off with a short list of nicknames.

"Reasons? What kind of reasons?"

"It's pretty simple, right? Not too fancy. To the point." A warmth rose in Tony's chest as he spoke, smiling into the mists. "What can I say? A good friend gave it to me. Granted, he was pissed at the time, but it just made it cute. Until he started beating the shit out of me."

What kind of good friend beats the shit out of someone?

Peter's eyes are still narrowed on the back of Tony's head as he hops down from the log and follows after him.

"What happened?"

Tony spun around, lifting his arms theatrically. "What, Pete? You never heard the one about how the God of Thunder met your old Iron Man?"

Peter blinks.

"Wait, what? N-no, no, I didn't --"

Peter stops, swallows, and attempts to start over.

"Why were you even fighting one another?"

"His brother was trying to attack New York with a cube, we took him into custody, Point Break wanted to handle things internally. We disagreed." 'God, he was pissy back then. Is it bad I miss it?'

"He's here. You never ask him yourself?"

Peter remembers the attack on New York. He and May had evacuated even though they were in Queens, a fair distance away from Manhattan. It was still close enough to be dangerous.

Peter shoots a look at Tony that was not very much unlike the look he gave Ned when he was grilling him about his various abilities as Spider-Man.

"No, no -- he's like, the second-coolest Avenger. I had a Thor poster in my bedroom in sixth grade."

"Well, you're out here shooting the breeze with the first. He's not scary. Way friendlier than yours truly. Behind the swing and the fake eye, he's a cupcake." Tony bunny hopped over another log, a definite airy quality surrounding him.

"Yeah, but I know you," Peter points out. Unlike Tony, he steps normally up onto the log and then steps normally down off it. "I don't know him."

More importantly:

"How did the two of you become friends after he beat you up?"

Flash's bullying never got physical, but he still couldn't imagine being friends with him.

"We saved New York together, but anyone can save a city together." Waves of nostalgia were flooding his chest, adding to the warmth that was there. God, was he reaching menopause or something?

"As I learned, he's a good guy. Knows how to have a great time. Ignorant of our Midgardian ways but eager to learn--you do not know fun until you take a Norse God to Joe Jr. and convince him the ketchup is the complimentary drink."

Peter squints, and then spins his head to one side, as if expecting Thor to be standing there.

It really is kinda unbelievable.

"Did that -- Did that really happen?"

"Ask him for what happened next. I've got a million of them." Tony grinned, leaning back as they descended a muddy slope. "It's good to have someone on your team back, it really is. He was gone for a few years, there."

"I know," Peter says. "There was a lot of speculation on Reddit that he might be dead or abducted by some other aliens." Since he was technically an alien, too.

"The last anyone got wind of him was that article on TMZ." Peter figures Tony knows what article he's talking about.