He woke when the car came to a stop, and looked around, confused. And then his eyes widened.
"We're here?"
Tony nodded, turning off the engine.
"Yes. Are you awake?"
Peter nodded, reaching for his seatbelt.
"Yes." He looked outside, again. "Wow. It's neat."
Tony didn't, necessarily, disagree.
It wasn't large – at least not on the outside. The wood it was made to resemble – or might actually be – logs, so it looked like a log cabin. There was a front porch that became a deck that went all the way around the building, two large windows that looked out onto the porch, and a railing that went along the deck. The steep roof was testimony that the area received a lot of snowfall, potentially, but the drifts weren't too bad, just then.
There was a tire swing hanging from a large branch of a tree on the side of the place, and the glint of the fading sunlight came from the frozen expanse of water that was the lake behind the building.
"There are some ground rules," Stark told the boy before Peter could open his door.
"Okay."
"No going outside without one of us with you."
"Okay."
"No wandering off."
"Right."
Those were pretty much the same rules he had everywhere else, really.
"Don't go near the water without us. The lake is iced over, but that doesn't mean it's safe to walk on. If I catch you out there, we're going home, immediately – it's that dangerous. Understood?"
Peter nodded.
"Yeah."
He wouldn't do anything to get Tony mad at him.
"No bringing snow inside," Pepper added.
"Oh." Peter hadn't thought of that one. "What if we want to melt some?"
"Why would we do that?" Tony asked, curiously.
"If we run out of water and want to take a bath. That's how the pioneers did it."
"We are neither going to run out of water, or pretend to be pioneers," his father assured him. "No snow in the cabin, unless it's on our clothes. Got it?"
"Yes."
Tony looked at Pepper.
"Anything else you can think of?"
"Don't feed the wildlife."
"Don't even get close to the wildlife," Stark added.
Peter smiled.
"Okay."
Tony made a motion with his hand, telling the boy he could open the door.
"Out you go. But don't go anywhere. You can help unload the car."
Peter nodded, opening his door and hopping out, looking around, excitedly when he did.
"There's the swing."
"You can try it, later, if you want."
"I do."
Tony looked at Pepper.
"Of course, he does."
She smiled at that.
"I want to try it, too."
"I'll push you both."
They got out but rather than head for the back of the car, Tony and Pepper led Peter up the stairs of the porch and the boy scurried by them to stand at one of the windows, trying to look in as Pepper pulled a key from her pocket.
"It's big," Peter observed.
Pepper unlocked the door and Tony reached a hand out to stop her before she could walk through.
"What?" she asked, curiously.
"Haven't you ever watched a horror movie involving a lonely cabin in the woods?" he asked, reaching for the door knob and carefully turning it. "There's always a crazy ax wielding murderer in a scary mask hiding behind the door waiting to club the first person that walks through."
"Are you trying to give your son nightmares?" she asked, amused.
"I'm just trying to make sure we live to get home," Tony told her.
He opened the door with a hard push, jumping into the foyer of the cabin with a challenging yell, and looked behind the door.
"Well?" Pepper asked.
"It's safe."
"I could see behind the door from the window," Peter pointed out as he followed Pepper into the cabin. "There wasn't anyone there."
"You can never be too careful." Tony looked around. "This is as nice as the pictures made it look."
The place wasn't fancy, but it was nice. And cozy. The fireplace had a big rocky hearth and a screen to keep the wood from popping burning embers onto the warm rug in front of it, or the couch that was even further back. There was a rustic kitchen (with a dishwasher, luckily) all the usual appliances and a comfortable sized wooden table with four chairs around it. Several doorways led from the main room, and Peter looked around, excitedly.
"Can I go find my room?"
"Yeah."
Tony followed. Not because he was worried about people hiding in the shadows, now, but because he was curious to look around, too. The master bedroom was big, with a large bed, dresser, and a TV on the wall. It also had an attached bathroom. The other two bedrooms didn't have TVs and didn't have their own bathrooms. But Peter's did have bunkbeds.
"Wow!" The boy climbed up the ladder on the side and got onto the top bunk. "I'm going to sleep up here, tonight."
Pepper hesitated, looking over at Tony, but the billionaire didn't look too concerned.
"Does he stick when he's sleeping, too?" she asked.
"No clue," he admitted. "But there's a rail for a reason, right?" He walked over and held his arms out to the boy. "Let's get the car unloaded before it gets dark."
The sun was already setting, despite the time of day, and it would be dark, soon.
Peter jumped into Tony's arms, giggling when the man caught him, easily, and then flipped him upside down for a moment before setting him on his feet.
"Okay."
OOOOOOOO
Again it was Peter who carried most of the items into the cabin, and again it wasn't because Tony was too lazy to do it. He was just always amazed by how much weight he could load the boy up with before Peter simply couldn't carry anymore on account of the load being too bulky.
"How much do you think he can lift?" Pepper asked Tony as they watched Peter walk carefully up the steps carrying all of the plastic grocery bags and his backpack draped over a shoulder.
"They stopped the experiment at a thousand pounds," Stark replied, reaching for her bag, as well as his and Peter's. She reached for a couple of reusable shopping bags that held random items. "But I bet he couldn't have done twice that."
"A ton? Really?"
"I wouldn't be surprised."
They walked up to the porch and inside, just in time to see Peter set all the groceries on the table and then drop his backpack on the floor.
"Any more?" the boy asked, not looking at all worn down by the heavy load.
"Nope." Tony smiled. "Go get unpacked."
Peter left them in a hurry, and Pepper smiled, looking around.
"This is a pretty nice place, isn't it?"
"Yes. It was a hunting cabin?"
"Yes. She said that she had all the taxidermy animals hanging on the walls taken down."
"I like it. If you don't buy it, maybe I will."
"I saw it, first."
"I know." He smirked. "If you buy it, then Peter and I can mooch it from you for weekend getaways – and I don't have to worry about the upkeep."
Which made Pepper shake her head, her expression amused.
"Or… maybe I bring Peter up here, but leave you at home to play with your Ironman suits…"
"We're a set," he told her. "I'm pretty sure I said that, before."
"You might have."
"It's still true."
"Hmm…" she feigned annoyance, and then shrugged. "I'll see what he says. Maybe I'll decorate the place in Batman…"
"Cute."
"Yes." Pepper smiled, pleased as always when she found a topic that she knew wasn't his favorite and was able to dig at him with it. Peter's love of all things Batman was a constant source of amusement to her – especially since Tony loved Peter enough that he'd never let on that he didn't love Batman, too. "Help me put the groceries away, and I'll make dinner."
"Fair."
The menu wasn't going to be complicated. Especially since they'd been told that they needed to bring all their food with them. The cabin had all the amenities needed; cooking utensils, appliances, dishes, bedding and everything that a place in the woods needed in order to be self-sustaining, but it didn't have food. Mainly because even canned goods would eventually become outdated, and the owner hadn't actually used the cabin more than twice since she'd inherited it.
Peter joined them in time to help Tony finish putting away the canned items that they'd brought (mostly stew, soup, and canned meat, like chicken and tuna) and then offered to help Pepper make dinner. She accepted and they shooed Tony out of the kitchen to go start a fire in the fireplace, while Pepper put the little boy to work opening cans of beef stew and she put some rolls in the oven to warm up.
"No salad?" Peter asked, when he realized that she wasn't making anything green to go with the meal.
"No. Someone forgot to put it in the cart at the grocery store…"
Since she glanced over at Tony, who was apparently ignoring them in favor of setting kindling on fire, Peter knew who she was talking about.
"We don't need salad," the boy assured her. "Look, there's carrots in this stew."
She looked, but didn't appear to be mollified.
"That's going to have to do, I suppose."