st_arkintern | (no subject)

"That's a conversation for later. Not for avoidance, just...later." Tony folded his arm back to preserve his warmth.

"This is about you and me, right? And you're one of the last things making me unhappy." 'Even when you're being one bratty son of a gun.

Peter nods solemnly. He wants to say that Tony doesn't make him unhappy either, but... their spat a few minutes ago proved that sometimes he really did. Even if he didn't intend to.

As the silence deepens around them, it seems like a good opportunity to change the topic to something less complicated.

"Did someone tell you about the last Other World yet?"

Or Other Worlds at all?

"Someone should tell me more." Tony nodded at Peter expectantly, turning to finally make their way further into the site.

He wasn't through with the young man yet, but he didn't sense anything would come of forcing the topic.

"The last time the portal opened, it was to Europe," he says. "Liz and I basically went all over the place." And because it seems important to clarify: "It wasn't our Europe, though. The first thing I tried to do was call you and May and Ned and Happy, but... nothing went through. And when I searched online, I couldn't find anything about you, either."

He'd tried. The only superhero subreddit he found was dedicated to fictional superheroes -- not real-life ones.

Resting his hand against a withered tree as he passed, Tony forced his way through the dried understory. "These things open on any kind of schedule?"

Peter shakes his head. "Not that I've noticed," he says. "It's opened three time since I've gotten here. Once in October, then February, and again in June."

A beat.

"It also happened one other time before I arrived here," he says. "In April, I think."

Not that Peter's keeping track or anything.

"Alright." Tony left it at that, filing away Peter's observations for later. There were more knowledgeable types, such as Kitty, to question about it. He held out little hope, given the inn's track record, that it could lead to anything promising regarding the return home, but it definitely necessitated further exploration.

First thing was first, of course. He needed a lay of the immediate land. Currently, it was no different than a misty hike in any other random forest.

Peter continues following along, the sound of the grass crunching beneath their feet the only real sound between them for a few minutes. It's not an uncomfortable silence; it's the kind of silence you have between two people when things are okay and you don't feel the need to just fill the air with words to end the silence.

"How much did you know about the Vulture?" Peter asks, suddenly. The question might seem like it came out of nowhere, but it's something that he's had on his mind for awhile now, and now, in the midst of the silence, seemed like a good time to bring it up. "I mean, after he was arrested."

"Adrian Toomes." Tony's warm breath escaped him in a visible sigh. "Not enough until it was too late, clearly. Well. Nearly too late." He glanced at Peter with a look caught between pride in the boy and regret.

"He's not coming after you or yours. I can promise you that much."

Peter glances over at Tony, trying to gauge his reaction. For a full 30 seconds, he doesn't say anything. Now, the silence is the weird, awkward kind of silence that Peter was well-practiced in.

"He was kinda my date to Homecoming's father."

"Awkward." Tony gave Peter a consoling pat on the back at that one. "Can't protect you from that one, kid."

"You knew some of the people you fought, right?" Peter asks. As much as he hates to admit it, he has read up on Tony. Even though all of it was public knowledge, it felt weird -- almost voyeuristic -- for him to be reading about him online.

"How did you deal with all that?"

Peter was asking some poignant questions. Tony was never good with those, but this wasn't his first rodeo. Not like it was for Peter. He stopped, one foot resting six inches up on a massive, gnarled root.

"...You oppose people when there are worse things waiting on the other side if you don't. If you don't have the will to do that much, you don't get to call yourself a hero."

Peter considers this, then presses his lips together.

"Can I tell you something?" he asks. "I just -- I need you to promise that you won't freak out."

Or at the least, he'll try not to.

Tony merely looked at Peter, leaning forward on his raised knee. He needed to stretch, and this was a good a time as any to stay loosened up.

"If whatever comes out of your mouth doesn't involve immediate or inevitable bodily harm to someone we know, I'll keep a lid on it."

"Ummm."

Peter's um lasts a few seconds longer than it possibly should. He takes a breath, and then:

"He figured out who I was," he says. "On the way to Homecoming."

Tony's expression was partially obscured behind his glasses, save for the muscles of his lips setting in a frozen, harsh line. He looked back forward at nothing in particular, exhaling a thick, heavy haze.

"I didn't mean for him to," Peter says quickly, because Tony's saying nothing and he looks mad (is he mad?). "I knew it was him the second he opened the door, and then I -- I was just so nervous, I didn't know what to do. And on the car ride there, he just -- he figured it out. My voice, me not being at the decathlon..."

He's sputtering all over himself. He knows he is, because it's what he does when he's nervous. He either says nothing at all, or blurts everything out at once in one long, rambling line.

"I'm sorry."

'Why didn't you tell me sooner...!?' Tony whipped his head back in Peter's direction, eyes wide with blazing apprehension. 'Do you really expect him to just sit on it, especially now that he's sitting pretty in prison with men on the outside!?'

Tony's jaw was tight with every castigation that was knocking behind his teeth. He yanked his leg back, stamping it into the mud.

Peter's heart is racing now. He knows Tony's mad. That look basically said it.

"You said you wouldn't get upset," he says, even though he knows Tony has plenty of reasons to be upset.

"Do you really want me to repeat my amendment?" Tony closed in on Peter, and none too slowly. "Or do we need a lesson in how supervillainy works."

Peter takes a step back as Tony closes in, and then another.

"Nothing's happened to me," he argues. "You were from December, right? I was fine then. And Mr. Star-Lord -- I wouldn't have been able to go into space if something happened to me."

He definitely shouldn't have said anything to Tony.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Tony cut in, entirely uninterested in arguing the point with the boy. He knew Peter knew better.

"What were you afraid of, exactly--that I'd get angry? Let me tell you what you should be afraid of, Peter. A man who stole alien technology to hijack a plane full of power sources that'd put nuclear energy to shame. A man that proved he would murder a ferry full of innocent people if it got him ahead."

He paused for only a moment to let that sink in.

"And if I don't know? I can't help you. I can't do everything in my power to make sure you and May don't suffer in the fallout."

Peter doesn't want to have another fight, and yet here he is, on the verge of having yet another fight.

Probably not on the verge. They are having another fight.

"This is why I can't tell you anything," Peter argues, casting an arm out.

Tony drew back, giving them both some room. They needed it. Beyond the dizzying heights of frustration that Peter summarily ignoring every point he made brought him to, there was an intense worry churning in his gut and his chest. His glasses receded into the nanoparticles that composed them to rub and cure his eyes of a sickly burning.

"There's this--this young man I met." His voice was tight but soft. He dropped his hand. "Lives in Queens with his aunt. Protects people just because it's the right thing to do. He's good. He's so good he doesn't know how good he is. And I worry. I worry because I know I need to let him make mistakes but I pray to God he never makes mine."