"So how did he do?"

Pepper was in the process of changing her shirt, so she didn't answer, right away. When she had pulled on a more casual polo shirt to match the jeans she was now wearing, she shrugged.

"His schoolwork is fine. He probably doesn't really need Friday and me hovering over his shoulder asking him what we can do for him. But he was definitely distracted, today."

"Did you ask him why?"

"Of course," she smiled to soften the annoyance that she heard in her own tone. "I wanted to make sure his hand wasn't hurting – from using the mouse, or tapping his display, or the typing he was doing when writing the report for the play."

"And?"

"He said he was fine, just thinking."

"About the infinity stones? Or about Romeo and Juliet?"

She smiled, and tucked her shirt into her jeans, before putting her hair into a ponytail.

"My question, exactly. About the power stones, he said." She knew what was going on, of course, and was just as concerned about keeping Peter from hurting himself now that they had him back up and running. "How to return the soul stone – and how to keep it from hurting him when he did."

"He'll use the gauntlet."

"Except that then that leaves the power stone sitting in our safe with nothing buffering it."

Tony frowned.

"Oh. Yeah, I didn't consider that."

"Neither did I. He's thinking about it, though. Him and Alec, I suppose."

"And…?"

Pepper sat down beside him on their bed with a tired and worried sigh, and leaned into Tony when he put his arm around her and kissed her temple, softly.

"He told me on the way home that he thinks it'll be safer if he just takes the power stone with him when he returns the soul stone."

"Seriously?"

"He doesn't like the idea of it being out in the open – even in our safe – without anything dampening the power. He said that Alec thinks it's not an issue, but he's nervous enough about it that he'd rather risk the ache that'll come with having it with him when he takes the soul stone back."

"How much ache are we talking about?"

"Peter didn't tell me." She rolled her eyes. "You know how he is; 'it probably won't be too much… just a bit more than a single stone.'"

"He's a pretty tough guy," Tony reminded her, trying to reassure. "Maybe he can handle two of them. It was all five that really hurt him – and the snap was what injured him. We'll wait and see if Stephen has any ideas about keeping the power stone here while we take Peter to this soul stone planet."

"It's called Vormir," Pepper told him, standing up and offering him her hand.

"How do you know that?"

"Peter told me, of course. How else would I know? It's not really a name I'd manage to pull out of my rear, now is it?"

He smiled, allowing her to pull him to his feet so they could go meet their son for dinner.

"That's so crude, Pep…" he made a show of kissing her hand and working his lips along her arm in a fair imitation of a movie character that they'd seen in a film they'd watched with Peter. "I love it when you do that…"

She chuckled.

"Just don't tell Peter."

OOOOOOOOO

Peter was sitting on one of the sofas in the lounge when they walked in. He was holding Nutmeg and leaning back so the kitten was sitting on his chest while he pet him. The boy smiled at them, clearly in a good mood, but didn't get up. It was still too early to be hungry and Nutmeg was asleep. He was pinned in place by a full pound and a half of purring, slumbering, adorable cuteness. Instead, he watched as they walked over to where he was sitting, and each took a spot on either side of him. Not to bolster as they normally did, but because it was habit, by then.

Nutmeg woke when Pepper reached for him, plucking him from Peter's chest, but he didn't complain with so much as a mew when she cuddled him under her chin.

"You know what we should do," Tony said, looking at the kitten and continuing the conversation they'd been having without Peter. "We should feed the power stone to Nutmeg. That'd keep it safe, right? And it wouldn't hurt him. He ate the tesseract, Nick said."

"Not him," Peter corrected. "Goose."

"Both Flerkins, though, right?"

"Nutmeg's a baby," Peter pointed out. "It might hurt him. Besides, what if we want it for something? Or what if it decided it wanted to be elsewhere? Could it move itself and hurt him to get free?"

"You already thought about it?" Tony guessed.

"Yeah."

Tony had met him and Pepper in the garage when they'd arrived home. He'd shown them the progress he was making on the Pontiac, and Peter would have felt guilty for all the work that he was putting into repairing the damage that he'd caused, except that it was obvious that Tony was thoroughly enjoying himself doing it. Then they'd split up; Tony and Pepper heading to their rooms so she could change into something a lot more comfortable, and Peter heading directly to the lounge – with a detour to go by the command center and rescue the SHIELD agents from being forced to deal with the mischievous kitten near their sensitive equipment.

Natasha and the others weren't back, yet, but that wasn't a surprise. Nick had been pressed into dog-sitting for Jack, since Steve hadn't yet convinced the lab that flying was fun, and the dog was still puppy enough that he was easily distracted and was extremely good at finding trouble or causing it with ease. Ironpig had spent some of the afternoon watching Tony work in the garage, but the piglet had wandered back to his enclosure to find dinner and then sleep off his busy day of sleeping.

"Well…" Tony shrugged. "It was just a thought. I'm willing to be overruled on it."

"I think it'd be safer to just take it with me," Peter said, uncertainly, and watching Tony's expression. When the billionaire didn't get too concerned, he decided that Pepper had probably already brought the notion up with him while she was changing. "It probably wouldn't be too bad. When I was gathering the stones, before, they didn't really start to hurt until the third or fourth one was added. Before that, it was just an ache. I could handle that for a while."

Neither of them looked entirely convinced, but to their credit, they didn't dismiss the idea, immediately.

"We'll worry about that when we get an idea of if we can even get there," Tony decided. "No sense worrying about it, yet."

"Besides, who knows when we'll find out if the link to the mind stone thing will work?" Pepper pointed out. "It could take weeks."

Peter shook his head.

"I think it's going to happen a lot sooner than that."

"Why do you say that?" Tony asked.

The boy shrugged.

"It's just a feeling I have."

"Spider senses thing?"

"I'm not sure. There's an urgency – kind of. I don't think it's coming from me, though. I think it's coming from the soul stone. It wants to go back, and it's reminding me that I can't keep it?"

"Not that you want to," Pepper said.

"Right. I was thinking about it, earlier. And trying to sort it out in my head. Alec says the soul stone is the repository for every soul that's ever been. He was there, so he knows better than I do, I guess. But apparently that makes it a pretty powerful thing to have control of, since I guess if you wield the stone, and you can convince it of your intentions, you can pretty much have access to all of them."

"Which could be incredibly tempting."

Peter nodded.

"And disastrous, too. So I need to get rid of it as soon as possible – before I start trying to justify reasons to use it, again."

He looked a little afraid of that possibility, and Pepper and Tony couldn't blame him.

"Let's have dinner," Stark suggested. "Then we'll find a diversion and I'll trounce the two of you at the game of your choice before bed."

Peter nodded his willingness and looked at Pepper, hopefully. He was ready to be done worrying for a while, if he could.

She recognized that, and she nodded, as well.

"We have an appointment to have your hand checked, tomorrow," she reminded him. "So I want to make an early night of it."

Not to mention two days in a row of him being tired all day. They definitely needed to start getting him back into a routine of getting some real rest.

"Yeah."

He agreed, completely – but he wanted some quiet time with them, first. Family time.

Tony took Nutmeg from Pepper and flipped the kitten on his back so he could rub the furry light-colored fuzz there, cuddling him.

"You don't get to play, though, mister."

Nutmeg just purred, making a grab for Tony's finger so he could gnaw on it.

He didn't want to play.