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Peter’s never been the outdoorsy type.
Growing up in the city with its asphalt playgrounds and crowded streets, this was never much of an issue for him. He loved books, video games, Lego sets, and action figures—all activities that could be enjoyed from the comfort of his living room.
In third grade, May and Ben decided to take him camping at a state park a few hours north of Queens. That adventure ended a mere six hours later when Peter was rushed to the nearest ER after sustaining an impressive burn on his leg from tripping over one of the tent’s guylines and falling into the campfire.
His aunt and uncle just gave up after that.
Which is why, when Fury first announced that Peter would be required to undergo a round of SHIELD-mandated wilderness survival training, he was less than thrilled.
“C’mon, Pete, it’s gonna be fun!” Clint insists, slinging one arm around the kid’s shoulders and gesturing broadly to their surroundings as they hike through the densely-wooded area on the edge of the compound’s property.
Peter, who is decked out in full army fatigues—courtesy of SHIELD—gives him a pained smile in return. “Yeah, totally.”
Clint goes on, “Sitting under the open sky, breathing in the fresh air, catching your own dinner... shitting in a hole you dug yourself”—Peter shudders a bit—“Just two guys, being dudes,” he concludes, giving Peter a clap on the back.
“What am I, chopped liver?” Tony grumbles from a few yards behind. Instead of the regulation army apparel and backpack that the other two are sporting, Tony is dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and is carrying what appears to be a briefcase.
Clint rolls his eyes. “You’re not even supposed to be here. I told Fury I would handle the training myself.”
Tony scoffs. “Oh and I’m just supposed to leave the kid with the guy who once shot himself in the foot to cause a distraction?”
Peter frowns at the archer. “Wait, you did what?”
Walking backward now, Clint turns around to face Tony. “I think you’re forgetting the fact that I am the father of three children, Stark. All of whom could survive in the forest for a week if they had to, the toddler included.”
Tony laughs bitterly. “Last time your family visited, your son sprained his wrist trying to backflip down the stairs to the gym.”
“And how exactly was that my fault?” Clint demands. “Cooper’s thirteen—he’s got a mind of his own.”
“You were cheering him on!”
“Well, I thought he was gonna land it,” Clint retorts. Turning to Peter, he adds with a shrug, “He usually lands it…”
Peter nods, giving another forced smile. Despite having met Cooper exactly once, this all sounds entirely plausible to him.
“I just have a hands-off parenting approach, alright?” Clint says.
“Which is exactly why I’m here,” Tony shoots back. “To babysit both of your asses so that you make it back alive.”
Peter groans. “We’re not even two miles away from the compound, Mr. Stark. This is basically your backyard.”
Turning in Peter’s direction, Clint holds up his index finger. “Hey, a wilderness is a wilderness,” he says knowingly. “I can name at least five things that could kill you within this twenty-foot radius alone.”
Tony mutters under his breath, “And I can think of at least one that wants to kill you, Bear Grylls…”
Peter sighs to himself as he trudges along. This is gonna be one hell of a weekend.
X
“Alright, here we are,” Clint declares. He slides off his backpack and plops it onto the ground. Tony remains a few yards behind, having stopped to polish his sunglasses on his shirt. “A water source is your highest priority in scouting out a location,” he goes on, gesturing to the muddy creek along the edge of the clearing that smells vaguely of rotten eggs.
A bit of Peter’s internal horror must show on his face because Clint laughs. “Don’t worry, Pete, we’ll work on filtration next. But first, where do you think we should set up camp?”
Peter glances around. It all looks the same to him—just trees, leaves, and mud. “Maybe… over there?” he says, pointing to a relatively dry-looking part of the ground.
Clint raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that, kid?”
“Um...Yes?” Peter says tentatively. He looks carefully at the archer’s face to try to determine the correct answer from his expression, but Clint remains unreadable. “Or… maybe no?”
“Well, which is it?” Clint asks nonchalantly. “I’ll go wherever you want—you’re in charge.”
Peter hesitates, still uncertain. “Um… yeah. Yeah, let’s go here,” he decides finally.
Clint shrugs his shoulders. “Alright. Let’s get started then.”
Just as Peter is beginning to unzip his backpack, Tony strides up between them. “Pete, don’t camp there,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “That’s a fire ant hill.”
“It’s a what?!” Peter exclaims, spinning around to stare at Clint.
“Don’t spoil it for him!” Clint complains. “He was gonna find out soon enough.”
“You were gonna let me camp on fire ants?” Peter demands.
“The first rule of SHIELD training,” Clint declares, “is that we learn best by doing.”
“Yeah, their paratrooping class is a real doozy…” Tony grumbles.
As the two men bicker about SHIELD’s training policies, Peter shuffles away and sits down on a rock. He’s just managed to free the compact two-person tent May bought him last weekend from his backpack when Clint calls over, “Oh no, we won’t be needing that!”
Peter looks up in confusion. “But we’re camping.”
“This is not camping, kid,” Clint says with a chuckle. “This is confronting Mother Nature in her natural habitat and learning the secrets of survival against all odds.” He pauses for a beat. “We’re building our own shelter!”
While Tony sits down on a nearby log and begins scrolling through his phone, Clint starts showing Peter how to cut down branches and stack them into a simple lean-to shelter. It’s held together with a combination of mud and leaves, just large enough for a single person to lie down inside. It seems sturdy enough, though it definitely won’t be winning any design awards.
By the time he’s done, Peter is hot and sweaty and his uniform is covered in mud. He’s really not looking forward to crawling in later that evening. Clint, however, is beaming.
“Nice work!” he says, patting Peter on the back. “Building a solid shelter is one of the keystones of survival.”
“Yeah, that’s nice, Barton,” Tony interrupts. Peter whirls around to see his mentor standing behind them in the clearing, a softball sized metal device clutched in one hand. “But why just survive when you can thrive?”
With that, he tosses the metal contraption onto the ground. Immediately, it pops open, and to Peter’s great surprise, the largest tent he’s ever seen suddenly springs up from inside, poles unfolding and snapping themselves into place in quick succession.
Peter gapes at him. “What the…?”
With a final ‘pop’, a shade stretches out from the tent’s roof over Tony’s head, blocking the sun.
“Wow,” is all Peter says.
Tony grins broadly. “My latest design. Nanotech has limitless applications these days. What do you think, kid?”
Before Peter can reply, Clint cuts in, sounding much sterner now. “You know, if you’re not going to take Peter’s training seriously, I think you should just go home.”
Tony seems taken aback by this response. His grin falters for a second before he scoffs hotly. “I am taking this seriously. It’s you who have him sleeping in a mud puddle.”
Clint crosses his arms. “I am trying to teach proper shelter building technique, and you show up with the fucking Taj Mahal.”
“It’s a tent, Barton,” Tony retorts. “A tent that can fit in your pocket. How is that not more helpful than that stick shack?” He points at the lean-to. “That thing looks like it would collapse under a light breeze.”
“The point is, he won’t always have that kind of tech,” Clint argues.
“When won’t he?” Tony demands. “What situation could possibly come up when the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is going to have to build a shelter out of sticks?”
“I’ll have you know, Stark, when I was on my three-week mission to the jungles of Panama—”
Having heard enough renditions of Clint’s infamous ‘severed toe story’ to last a lifetime, Peter just lowers himself down and crawls into the muddy shelter with a deep sigh.
It’s too bad Clint didn’t teach him how to make a door. He’d really like to slam it.
X
The next hour is spent with Tony and Clint arguing over how to deal with the water situation. Predictably, Tony has brought along a high-tech filtration device that’s capable of purifying and cooling multiple liters in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile, Clint teaches Peter how to build a dam in the stream out of rocks and filter a small amount of water using moss, a tiny bottle of dark brown liquid, and his own sock.
“Are you sure this is safe to drink?” Peter asks, looking skeptically into the cloudy water in the small metal cup Clint’s just handed him.
Clint nods. “The iodine will have killed off most of the bacteria and we’ve filtered out all the dirt particles now with the sock and moss.” He takes a sip from the cup. A grimace flashes across his features, but fades just as quickly as it appears. He shrugs. “Eh, I’ve had worse.”
Peter looks longingly in Tony’s direction. The man is currently sitting about twenty yards away in a fold out lawn chair under his tent’s shaded porch area. He’s wearing sunglasses and a Starkpad sits on his lap. His jeans are rolled up to his knees so that his feet can soak in a small inflatable pool of freshly filtered water. He empties a packet of Crystal Light powder into his glass, which, just to rub it in, has a little paper umbrella in it.
“You guys doing alright?” Tony calls over. He tilts the glass in their direction and smiles. “Want some lemonade?”
Peter glances sideways at Clint. The archer is holding his nose as he downs another mouthful of their own water.
He sighs, a little wearily. “No thanks, Mr. Stark. We’re good.”
X
When Peter first found out about this training mission, he didn’t put much thought into what they would be eating. He assumed it would be similar to what May and Ben brought along for their brief foray into camping—hot dogs, canned beans, maybe some beef jerky.
He wasn’t prepared for this.
“Just do it quick,” Clint instructs, passing the rock to Peter. “Right on the back of the neck, where I showed you.”
Horrified, Peter stares into the eyes of the fluffy brown creature that’s currently ensnared in the trap he and Clint rigged two hours ago. The rabbit’s tiny foot is caught by the wire and it’s struggling frantically to escape. Peter’s heart clenches at the sight.
“If you do it right, he won’t feel a thing,” Clint promises. “One and done. Let’s go, kid.”
Peter lifts the rock up shakily, eyes still locked on the rabbit. But that’s as far as he gets.
“No! I can’t do it, I’m sorry!” he blurts, shoving the rock back into Clint’s hand.
Clint’s tone is gentler now. “Peter, I get it. But energy is key—it’s one of the five pillars. And in a true survival situation, this little guy could end up saving your life.”
Peter’s lip trembles. “But look at his face. He’s so cute, Mr. Barton, we can’t kill him!”
Clint sighs. “Look, when you’re stranded in the wilderness—”
That’s when Peter snaps. “But I’m not!” he protests. At Clint’s surprised expression, he backtracks. “I mean, not really, anyway. You already taught me how to catch him—that’s gotta be good enough, right? Can’t we just let him go?”
Clint looks him over for a long moment. Finally, he sighs and cuts the quick-release wire for the trap with his army knife. The rabbit scampers away into the bushes.
Feeling his face flush, Peter looks down at his lap. “Thank you,” he mumbles.
“It’s alright, kid,” Clint assures. “As long as you understand the basics of hunting, I guess we’ve achieved our goal.” He pushes himself up to standing. “Now onto plan B.”
Peter looks up, surprised. “There’s a plan B?”
“There’s always a plan B. The alphabet has twenty-six letters,” Clint says with a chuckle. “And if things really go to shit, I know a couple other languages that have even more.”
From his back pocket, Clint whips out a small paperback book titled ‘Dr. Egon’s Guide to 1001 Edible Plants & Fungi’. “If we can’t eat the rabbit, we will eat like rabbits.”
Peter sighs. “Oh. Fun.”
X
An hour later, an array of various plants, nuts, berries, and roots are spread out on the ground in front of Peter. Clint is instructing him on how to check each one against the diagrams in the handbook. It’s tedious work—Peter very much misses Google.
“What’s cooking, kid?”
Peter glances up to see Tony approaching their campsite. His mentor is stretching stiffly, having spent the last hour napping in his tent palace while the other two were busy foraging for dinner.
“Um… salad?” Peter replies. “Maybe?” Having just identified the current berry he’s examining as ‘deadly nightshade’, he tosses it to the side bitterly. “Except, turns out most of this stuff is poisonous.”
“Not everything ,” Clint points out. The archer scrapes the inner white part off of a piece of wood with his knife and pops it into his mouth. “Can’t beat pine bark for fiber content.”
“Oh. Right.” Peter forces a smile. “I forgot we can eat trees.”
Tony bends down and picks up a mushroom. “Hang on…” He peers closer at the light brown fungi. “This one looks familiar.” Narrowing his eyes, he turns to Clint. “...From my college days.”
Peter frowns at the mushroom in confusion. “Wait, this one is edible? So can we make, like, soup?”
A short, high-pitched noise erupts from Tony, some mixture of humor and exasperation. He runs a hand over his face. “Christ, Barton…” he says under his breath. “And you wondered why I came…”
“Hey, this is a teachable moment,” Clint retorts, a bit defensively. “I wasn’t going to actually let him eat them.”
Suddenly, it clicks in Peter’s brain. “Oh. Ohhhh.”
“Yeah, we’re not having that kind of fun tonight,” Tony huffs.
(Personally, Peter isn’t having much of any kind of fun at the moment, but he keeps that to himself.)
Tony heads back to his own campsite, and Clint turns to Peter. “Alright, so for dinner, it looks like we’ve got”—he points to each item in turn—”bark, some edible lichen to boil, a handful of acorns, and for protein, six beetles.” Clapping Peter on the shoulder, Clint grins broadly. “That’s a balanced meal, even without Bugs Bunny! Let’s get this cooked.”
“Uh huh, totally.” With his enhanced metabolism, Peter knows he can’t go all weekend without food, but at the moment he’s not seeing any better options.
Suddenly, Peter remembers his aunt’s tendency to slip extra snacks into his luggage while he isn’t looking, and a spark of hope flickers in his chest. He just needs to walk far enough into the foliage to be able to search his supplies undetected.
Grabbing his backpack, Peter pushes himself up to standing. “Uh… I have to go to the bathroom,” he announces.
“Ah, okay,” Clint says. He flips open his own backpack and retrieves a small collapsible shovel with a grin. “Don’t forget this!”
“Oh yeah, of course.” Peter takes it from him with an awkward thumbs up. Then, as he takes a step backwards away from Clint, a single strangled croak echoes through the woods.
X
Forty-five minutes later, Peter’s still in a daze. He sits on a log, staring into the campfire, unblinking. “I can’t believe I killed him…”
Sitting beside him, Tony pats the kid gently on the shoulder. “It’s alright, Pete. You didn’t mean to.”
“I just... he was right there…” Peter breathes out. “It was like... he hopped right under my foot.” He inhales a shaky breath. “Like he had some kind of death wish.”
“It’s okay. It was an accident,” Tony consoles.
“What you call an accident, I call providence,” Clint pipes up. He rotates the stick in his homemade roasting spit to evenly cook the squished frog over the campfire.
Peter swallows hard and glances away. “Do you think he had a family, Mr. Stark?” he whispers.
Tony smirks a bit. “Nah, I’m sure he was a bachelor frog. He gave off that sort of vibe.”
Peter sighs deeply. He knows his mentor is just humoring him, but he really does hope that the frog he just accidentally stomped to death didn’t leave behind a wife and kids or anything. He feels horrible enough taking a life as is.
The fire crackles in the pit as another log catches flame. It took Peter over half an hour of half-heartedly scraping at a piece of flint to spark the pile of dead leaves and twigs he and Clint collected into a modest campfire. Tony, meanwhile, set blaze to a literal bonfire on his end of the campground with the help of SI pyrotechnology.
(Thankfully, Tony’s tent is fire resistant. His eyebrows, not so much.)
“I think it’s ready now,” Clint announces. He slides the roasted amphibian off the stick and onto a large leaf. “Flip you for the legs!”
Peter’s stomach turns at the sight. “Um, I’m good,” he mumbles. “I’m actually not too hungry...”
Clint raises an eyebrow. “Sure about that?”
“Yeah, totally.” As if on cue, his stomach growls loudly. Peter groans and squeezes his eyes shut, wishing he was anywhere but here.
“It’s already dead,” Clint reasons. “It would be a shame to let good meat go to waste.” He rips off a leg and holds it out to the kid. “Tastes like chicken.”
Immediately, Peter has to press his fist to his lips to keep from gagging.
“Alright, I’m overruling this one,” Tony intervenes, turning to glare at the archer. “I’ll put up with your ridiculous primitive survival methods”—he gestures first to the lean-to, then to the sock filtration system, and last to the poisonous vegetation—“but I absolutely draw the line at forcing him to eat his own victim.”
“Mr. Stark…” Peter whines.
Clint crosses his arms. “You know, when I was in Panama—”
Tony butts in, “Oh enough about fucking Panama! The kid is in New York! I’m giving him an MRE to eat and that’s final.”
X
The freeze-dried food packet that Tony gives him is supposed to taste like chili con carne. Peter thinks that description is a bit of a stretch, but given the alternatives, he really can’t complain.
It would have been an almost pleasant meal if he hadn’t burned his thumb while pouring the boiling water into the packet.
“It’s fine, oh my god,” Peter says for the fourth time. He’s currently soaking his left hand in Tony’s inflatable kiddie pool while the right hand shovels spoonfuls of rehydrated con carne into his mouth.
“No, let me see it,” Tony insists, beckoning for Peter’s hand. He has a whole travel-sized first aid kit open on the ground in front of them and his brow is creased in concern.
“Seriously, it’s okay,” Peter insists again. He lifts his hand from the water momentarily to show his mentor. There’s a small blister on the reddened skin, but it’s not that bad. Mostly, Peter is just really fucking hungry.
Tony frowns at the mark. “Here, this will help.” He pulls a single-use packet of burn ointment from the kit and tosses it Peter’s direction, but Clint intercepts it mid-air.
“We don’t need your fancy creams, Stark,” Clint scoffs. “Mother Nature has a full medicine cabinet at our disposal here.”
Peter’s eyes drop to the collection of odd-looking leaves Clint ran off to gather immediately after the incident. The archer is grinding them into an ugly green paste between two rocks.
“We just smear a little of this on him and he’s good as new,” Clint assures.
“No, really, it barely even hurts,” Peter tries to say, but the two men don’t seem to be listening.
“Oh no you don’t, Barton,” Tony argues. “We’re not fucking around with injuries. I’m not letting you open the kid up to infection by spreading your fucking leaf pesto on him like he’s a piece of bruschetta.”
“Hey, this plant has antibacterial properties,” Clint retorts, still grinding the paste, “which you would know if you’d read Egon’s sequel: 1001 All-Natural Herbs to Cure What Ails You.”
Tony scowls. “We’re not taking chances on the kid’s health. I told his aunt I’m bringing him back in one piece.”
“Guys!” Peter snaps, finally putting down his chili. “Seriously, this is not a big deal, okay? I heal so quickly this will be irrelevant in another thirty minutes anyway. Hell, I got stabbed last weekend and you can’t even tell!”
Tony’s eyes widen and Clint pauses his grinding. “You got stabbed?!” they demand in unison.
(Oops. He probably shouldn’t have said that, especially after going to all the trouble of hacking Karen’s programming to override the injury reporting feature.)
“Uh, it wasn’t much of a stab,” Peter backtracks. “More of a poke, really. Nothing like that time last month”—both men’s eyes widen further—“which wasn’t too bad either!” Peter quickly throws in. “And anyway, Ned is getting much better at giving stitches these days ever since he started taking home ec, so I barely even have a scar.”
Clint opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it again before words come out.
Tony scrubs a hand over his face. “Literally everything you just said was worse than the preceding statement.”
“The point is,” Peter plods along, “that I heal fast, okay? We don’t need to argue about a stupid blister. It’s not going to get infected. So can we all just stop breathing down each other’s throats and chill out? Please?”
An air of tension falls over their group following Peter’s outburst. It’s finally broken when Clint shrugs and picks up the frog to take another bite out of the leg. “Well alright then,” he says as he chews. “But I’m adding that you refused medical care to my mission report.”
“Yeah, you do that…” Peter mutters darkly.
“And I’m filing my own report, Barton,” Tony informs them. He whips a Starkpad out from inside his jacket pocket and starts scrolling through a lengthy-looking document. “It details every ludicrous ‘survival’ skill you’ve demonstrated, ranging from nearly letting him get eaten by fire ants to literally filtering water through a sock!”
Clint jumps to his feet. “You know what, Stark?” he snaps. “You have been nothing but trouble ever since you weaseled your way into coming on this trip!”
“Trip?” Tony echoes, also standing up. “What trip? This is my own property!”
It’s apparent that neither of his trainers have any desire to listen to him, so Peter figures he might as well continue his dinner. Standing up from the kiddie pool, he grabs another foil envelope from Tony’s stash and walks back over to his and Clint’s campfire to get more boiling water.
“I am trying to teach primitive survival training!” Clint scowls as Peter plops himself down on the log. “Your high tech bullshit is getting in the way!”
After adding water to the MRE packet, Peter stirs it with a fork, a bit more forcefully than necessary. The label was smudged so he’s not sure if this one is the chicken curry, or the apple cobbler—from the smell, it really could go either way.
Tony throws his hands up in frustration. “You’re going to stand there, chomping away on suicidal Kermit the Frog, and tell me that my tech is bullshit?”
(After a few bites, Peter concludes that it’s most likely the curry. Thankfully, a lifetime of May’s cooking has prepared him for anything.)
“You wanna go, Stark?” Clint challenges. “Do you wanna fucking go?”
“I’d like to see you try!” Tony snarls.
Peter hears the sound of the watch gauntlet whirring to life in the background as he aggressively chews his rehydrated chicken bits.
No, wait, that was an apple piece.
Guess he’s moved on to dessert.
X
After listening to Clint and Tony bicker for over an hour, Peter was actually relieved when things finally boiled over. By the time the sun had set, a furious Clint stalked off to assemble his own lean-to shelter—this one even more shoddily constructed—and holed himself up inside. Tony, meanwhile, sulked off to his tent mansion.
Peter sits just outside his own shelter in the dark forest, poking at the smoldering remains of his campfire with a stick. He’s trying to figure out exactly how he’s going to last another thirty-six hours through this ridiculous testosterone match.
Then suddenly, the answer seems clear as day.
X
Clint wakes to a high-pitched ‘ding’.
Years of working for SHIELD have trained him to react at a moment’s notice. He whips a knife out from under his moss-pillow and scrambles out of the shelter, ready to face whatever danger is lurking outside.
He blinks, confused. “Tony?”
The engineer is poking his head out of the tent. “What?”
Clint blinks at him, momentarily thrown as his gaze falls to the plate in Tony’s hand. “Did you bring a toaster to survival training?”
Tony shrugs. “It’s solar-powered. I don’t like raw bread.” He holds out the plate. “Want one?”
It’s as close to an apology as Clint figures Stark is capable of. He decides to just go ahead and accept the peace offering for what it is. Plus, he’s fucking hungry.
As Clint takes a piece of toast, he glances back at the other lean-to. “Should we go wake the kid? He’d probably like to get in on this.”
Tony huffs. “Actually, I was just looking in my stash and I’m short like, five MREs. He might be still full from last night.”
Clint chuckles. “I don’t know, I once saw that kid polish off three-and-a-half entire meat lovers pizzas in a row. Even Steve looked horrified.”
“Good point,” Tony agrees.
Together, the two of them move over to Peter’s little shelter, Clint munching on his breakfast. He figures now that Stark has extended an olive branch, he should do his part as well.
“It’s good toast,” he remarks.
“Sourdough,” Tony replies and Clint hums in acknowledgment.
Tony squats down in front of the shelter opening. “Hey Pete? You want some—” He stops abruptly and turns to Clint with a frown. “He’s gone.”
Clint bends down to look into the shelter. Everything is still in place—the pine needle ‘mattress’ they’d compiled, the kid’s sleeping bag, and backpack are all accounted for—but Peter is nowhere to be seen.
Straightening himself back up, Clint shrugs. “He probably just went to take a leak or something. Wouldn’t be too worried.”
A look of relief comes over Tony. “Ah, yeah. Okay.”
They wait an awkward moment before Clint breaks the silence, “Got any more toast?” he asks.
Tony smirks. “Brought a whole loaf.”
X
After three more pieces of toast, there’s still no sign of the teenager and Tony is getting antsy. “Maybe we should go look for him,” he suggests.
Clint glances at his watch. “Calm down, it’s only been fifteen minutes.” He shrugs. “And if he really did eat five MREs…”
Tony rolls his eyes. He turns around to start packing up the toast when his eyes fall on the collapsible metal object still leaning against a tree. He frowns. “Wait, wouldn’t he have taken the shovel?”
X
After a twenty-minute search around the campground, both men hollering Peter’s name in increasingly worried tones, the two meet back at the campsite empty-handed. There’s no choice but to come to the horrifying conclusion that Peter really is gone. The fragile peace treaty that existed earlier is instantly shattered as the two turn on each other.
“How the fuck did you lose a person sleeping ten feet away from you?!” Tony demands.
“I didn’t lose him,” Clint retorts. “We both lost him.”
“This is your mission, Barton! That means you were responsible for him!”
“Oh so it is my mission now?” Clint laughs bitterly. “This whole time you’ve been undermining my authority and contradicting every one of my methods, but something goes wrong and suddenly I’m the one to blame?!”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying!” Tony spits out. “You wanted him sleeping in that stupid pile of sticks next to you, so yeah, you were responsible for him! And now he’s god-knows-where! He might be lost, or kidnapped, or eaten by bears or—”
“Oh would you pull yourself together already?!” Clint snaps. “He can’t have gotten far. I’ll just start going east and you go west and we’ll make a perimeter around the area, just like I did in Pana—”
Tony interrupts, “If you tell that fucking story one more time, I AM CUTTING OFF ANOTHER TOE!”
Both men glare at each other, breathing heavily. Finally, Clint clenches his teeth and takes a long, measured breath. As pissed as he is at Stark right now, he has to cut him a bit of slack. God knows he’d be just as upset if one of his own kids was missing.
Clint rubs a hand over his eyes. “Alright, you know what? This isn’t helping,” he says. “If we’re going to find the kid, we need to work together.”
Tony scowls, but most of his heat is gone now. “And how exactly do you suggest we do that?”
“We go back to the compound, get the team together, and start a full-scale search and rescue op,” Clint declares. “We can have one group scouring the woods while another goes through our list of known enemies. If that doesn’t yield any results, we take this to SHIELD—get the big guns.”
Tony runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah… yeah, let’s do that,” he says with a heavy sigh.
Clint places a hand firmly on the other man’s shoulder. “Look at me,” he commands. Tony glances up and Clint locks eyes with him. “We’re going to find him. I promise.”
Tony nods grimly. “We’d better.”
X
“Hey kid? Want another one?” Happy offers cheerily.
Sitting at the sunny breakfast bar in the compound’s kitchen, a pajama-clad Peter grins and hands over his syrup-covered plate. “Is that even a question?”
Happy—who is wearing an apron that declares Mr. Good Lookin’ is Cookin’—smirks as he lifts the next chocolate chip pancake up with a spatula and deposits it onto Peter’s plate.
Sitting beside Peter and drinking a steaming mug of coffee, Pepper points to the red and white can in front of her. “Whipped cream?”
“Yes please,” Peter chirps.
Pepper picks up the Reddi-wip and draws a smiley face on the pancake’s surface before giving Peter’s hair a ruffle.
Just then, the backdoor bursts open. Breathless and disheveled, Clint and Tony stumble into the kitchen.
“FRIDAY, assemble the team!” Clint commands at the same time that Tony blurts, “Pep! The kid is gone! He’s—”
Tony stops abruptly, chest still heaving, as his eyes dart from Peter, to Pepper, to Happy, then back to Peter again. “Wh...What is going on?”
Still chewing his pancake, Peter raises a hand and waves. “‘Sup, Mr. Stark?” He nods to Clint. “Mr. Barton. You sleep well?”
Tony’s eyes narrow and he braces himself against the wall. “Oh you are... so dead… kid,” he pants.
Peter feels a little bad now as he watches the two men doubled over, struggling to catch their breath after clearly having just sprinted most of the two miles back from the campground. Then he recalls the hours of torture he endured yesterday and his sympathy dissolves. “So you finally noticed I was gone, huh?”
“This is definitely going in my report to Fury...” Clint grumbles.
With a smirk, Happy looks over to Tony. “So, can I go ahead and cancel that rescue mission you texted me about, boss?”
Tony glares back and points a finger at Happy. “You are on my shit list now, Hogan,”—he moves the finger around the room accusingly—“the whole lot of you.”
“Yeah, mine too,” Clint pipes up.
Tony turns on him. “You can shut it,” he grumbles. “You’re number one.”
Clint flips him off.
Pepper sighs deeply. “Oh would you two stop acting like children? Just kiss and make up already.”
Clint and Tony look ready to launch into another heated argument when Happy shoves two plates of pancakes at them.
“Syrup’s on the table,” he cuts them off. “And I’m taking over Peter’s survival skills class. Fury already approved.”
Both men turn their heads in unison and shoot Happy an incredulous look. “You’re what?!”
X
Three weeks later, Peter is sitting on a camp chair by the fire he and Happy constructed, roasting a marshmallow. A neat, sturdy-looking shelter sits just off to the side, but there’s also a comfortably-large tent to actually sleep in. There’s a frying pan with the remains of their fresh-caught fish dinner and an ample supply of filtered water—free of all socks—is collected in a jug.
“So you really used to be an Eagle Scout?” Peter questions.
Happy smiles fondly. He’s dressed in khaki cargo shorts and is wearing a boonie hat. “I still am, kid. Once a scout, always a scout.”
“That’s really cool,” Peter remarks. He plucks the toasted marshmallow from his stick and pops it into his mouth. “I never would have thought you were into this kind of thing.”
“Everyone’s full of surprises, kid.” Happy chuckles. “Speaking of… did you ever hear the real story of how Clint severed his toe?”
Peter frowns. “Wait, so it wasn’t because he was kidnapped by bloodthirsty cartel leaders and tortured six days for government secrets?”
Happy barks out a sharp laugh. “Hell no. He was putzing around in his two-star Panama motel room with a machete and dropped it on his own foot. Cut the whole toe clean off.”
Peter’s eyes widen. “No!” he gasps. “Seriously?”
Happy nods. “He did sew it back on himself though—too embarrassed to go to Medical. The thing’s ugly as hell. His foot modeling days are over.”
Peter giggles, sliding another marshmallow onto this stick. If there’s one thing he’s learning about Happy, it’s that he’s got all the good dirt on people.
As if reading his mind, Happy asks, “Did I ever tell you about that time I had to bail Tony out of a Slovakian prison cell?”
Peter shakes his head, grinning. “Nope.”
As Happy launches into the next tale, Peter gazes up at the stars overhead—a sight he’s never seen in Queens—and thinks it’s possible that Clint’s onto something with this nature thing after all.
Epilogue:
Meanwhile, Tony is lurking behind a bush about fifty yards out, watching the two intently through his high-powered binoculars.
“Alright, my turn,” Clint whispers, beckoning for the device.
Tony swats his hand away. “No, these are mine. You don’t get to shit-talk my tech and then ask to borrow it.”
“I just wanna zoom in and see what knot they used to tie the tarps down,” Clint says.
“Why don’t you just ask your precious Mother Nature to whittle you a pair out of bark?” Tony mocks.
“C’mon, this is a safety check,” Clint argues. “There’s a twelve percent chance of thunderstorms tonight. I just want to make sure they’re prepared.”
Tony scoffs quietly. “Some Hawkeye you are...”
Clint rolls his eyes. “The name has nothing to do with my vision. I wear contact lenses.”
“Well, I call false advertising.”
With an exasperated sigh, Clint attempts to pry the binoculars from Tony’s grip, but the engineer twists them away.
“It’s five seconds,” Clint hisses. “Just let me see.”
“I said no!”
Clint grabs hold of the neck strap of the binoculars, but Tony detaches the strap and stuffs them down the front of his hoodie. “Ha!”
“Oh, real mature,” Clint scowls before tackling Tony to the ground.
Tony yelps in surprise and both men roll on the forest floor, wrestling to get the binoculars back. They’re so preoccupied that they don’t even notice the shadowy figure approaching.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Tony gives a startled cry at the unexpected voice. Clint jumps and scrambles off him, looking ready to fight.
Peter is standing in front of them, giggling quietly at the scene.
“Jesus, kid,” Tony breathes out, clutching his chest. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you…”
“Sorry,” Peter says, not sounding sorry in the slightest.
“I see Nat’s been giving you stealth lessons,” Clint grumbles, sitting up and brushing the dirt from his clothes.
Grinning, Peter stretches out a hand to help pull Tony to his feet. “If you guys are done spying on us, Happy told me to invite you over for s’mores.” His eyes fall to Clint. “Unless you’d rather gather more tree bark to chew on,” he offers wryly.
“Your kid is a smartass,” Clint mutters to Tony as he gets to his feet.
Tony rolls his eyes. Turning to Peter, he asks, “You guys got the jumbo marshmallows?”
“Of course,” Peter replies as they make their way back to the campfire. “We know what we’re doing, Mr. Stark.”