The Talk

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“You know, I’d really like to start this out cold.” Tony began as Peter made himself comfortable in his rocky abode, and he reached for the phone. “But this is a two-milkshake job.”

The No Dairy, No Red Meat, and No Gluten rules sat woefully forgotten under the pile of Tony Stark’s vices. He had resorted to theorizing that Thor had passed along some metabolic tolerance by way of exposure.

Comments

[st_arkintern]

"I'm not," he says. "But I think you have to make a list first."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Just plant a tree for me." Tony rolled back, taking up the elegant glass full of the cold dairy.

[st_arkintern]

"Okay," Peter says, though it's not the answer he's hoping for. He really wishes Tony would tell him what to get. He knows Tony will probably be happy with anything, but Peter doesn't just want to get him anything. "I'll make sure to point out what tree is yours."

Peter looks down at the moleskin journal, still sitting in his lap. "Guess I should read." He bites his lower lip and then opens to the first page.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

As the teen cracked open the journal, Tony rubbed his eyes and nursed the sugary drink. Almost immediately his mind was consumed with this and that with nowhere to go--not yet, anyway.

So, instead he sat back and dug out a journal of his own--one with a specific message in mind.

[st_arkintern]

After a few moments of careful reading, Peter looks up.

"When did you see the Mind Stone in action?" Peter reaches his milkshake and takes a long sip, still watching Tony.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Fell victim to it once. It was brief." Brief. Intense.

[st_arkintern]

Tony's purposeful vagueness just makes him all the more curious. "What happened?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Showed me a vision of the future." Tony's only tells were the way his jaw subtly clenched and the slow but anxious tap of his pen against the surface of his paper. "One that, in some universe, we saw come true."

[st_arkintern]

It takes only a second for Peter to mentally answer his own question. "Oh," he says, and he doesn't press further.

He continues reading. "Did you see much of the fighting?" he asks, as he flips a page.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Everything on Titan. The tail end of Wakanda." And everything that came after went without saying.

[st_arkintern]

"So you didn't see the stuff on New York or the fight with the Guardians?" Peter doesn't know what Wakanda is or what happened there, but it sounds like there's some stuff Tony doesn't know, either.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

Tony merely shook his head, eyes flitting between the journal in Peter's hand and his own. Quill had referenced the battle with the Guardians more than once and he'd been able to infer what happened from then on.

[st_arkintern]

"Well, I was on a school field trip when the ships came down from the sky," he says. Yes, Peter had field trips back home, even if he didn't have them here. "We were on the bus when we saw this ship come down from the sky, so I ditched the bus and joined you guys. It was you, Dr. Banner, Dr. Strange, and a wizard friend of his whose name I didn't catch." Peter thinks that's everybody.

"There were two aliens there, a big one and this really tall thin one that kinda looked like Squidward. The big one, he was really physically strong, the other one had some sort of powerful magic."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Like Squidward." Tony squinted, but committed the info to memory. "Thanos keeps good company."

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah," Peter says. "He was trying to get Dr. Strange because he had the Time Stone. You told me to go after the Wizard and so I ended up chasing after them and got kinda pulled up with them."

Peter frowns as he continues reading, his frown deepening. "How does Thor know so much about all the stones?" he asks, once he's done reading about their powers.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

Curiouser and curiouser. So he and this Dr. Strange had some time to get chummy.

“Despite what the tabloids would have you believe, he didn’t vanish because he got dumped. He was chasing after them.”

[st_arkintern]

Peter's frown deepens. "Did you guys know about Thanos before he showed up?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Not by name." Which was true--Tony had only seen the shadowy entity behind The Attack On New York in his nightmares for six years. The look on Tony's face conveyed this sentiment all on its own.

[st_arkintern]

Peter hesitates when he sees the look on his face, but he has to ask it.

"But you guys knew," he says. "Why wasn't everyone looking for the stones?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Thor was the only one with the knowledge and the means. Rest of us kept running point on earth. Of course, little did we know there was a stone keeping wizard hanging around Greenwich Village." He shrugged, not even finding it in himself to be frustrated or surprised.

"If I'd known a lot of things I'd have done a lot of things."

[st_arkintern]

As much as Peter tries, he can't seem to get his brain around it. "I don't get why he wouldn't tell everybody."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"He can be a slippery snail." Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose with a weakly affectionate chuckle. "Have you gotten through everything?"

[st_arkintern]

"No," Peter says. "I'll finish reading now."

It takes another ten minutes before Peter reaches the long string of Asgardian runes. He had been struggling to process everything up until this point; there were parts that felt like he had stepped into a chat mid-conversation and there were things he was expected to know that he didn't. With enough context, though, he was able to mostly deduce what was what.

Peter turns the notebook to Tony. "What's this?" he asks, pointing at the runes.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Asgardian. Only meant for brotherly eyes." Tony shook his head once. Even if he'd managed to learn runes long ago with gaps of nothing to do, he still respected his partner's privacy.

[st_arkintern]

Peter nods and continues reading. There's not much left from there, and much of it is bullet-pointed, which makes understanding it a lot easier than the long explanations at the beginning of the notebook.

When he reaches the end, he closes it and sets it in his lap.

"Wow."