Dinner that night was a hodgepodge of everything that they had left in the coolers – aside from what they had planned for breakfast the next morning. Strange and Stark had chilidogs with chips and macaroni salad, Natasha and Peter had potato salad and sandwiches with the last of the lunch meat, cheese and bread. They'd have breakfast at the campsite, but were planning on leaving sometime in the early afternoon so Stark had planned it out that they would just stop at a restaurant someplace and eat a hot meal that they didn't have to cook on their way home.

Natasha had been bundled up in a chair by the fire, with her leg up on a stool and the cloak of levitation spread over her blanket, crooning cheerfully, even though Peter was the only one who felt it. Peter was in a chair as well, but he wasn't feeling any ill-effects from their afternoon walk – he still smelled the residual of the skunk and knew it was going to take more than one shower out in the woods to get all of it off their hides, and out of their minds – but he hadn't been injured.

He had planned on eating the last of the chocolate bars and graham crackers as odd little sandwiches – he had finally run out of marshmallows – but Strange had 'found' him a bag, and the three adults watched with what could only be baffled fascination as the boy once more stuffed himself on charred marshmallows.

"You're going to make yourself sick," Tony warned him as the boy reached into the bag for a couple more marshmallows and put them on his skewer.

Peter shook his head.

"Not with a few marshmallows."

"I counted twelve," Stephen said from the other side of the fire, where he was sipping coffee.

"You missed a couple, then," Natasha told him. "My count is 15."

"We don't want them to go to waste, right?" Peter pointed out, watching as the marshmallows on the skewer caught on fire and waiting for the right moment to blow them out so he could eat them without burning his mouth.

He'd already run out of chocolate and graham crackers.

"Keep telling yourself that when you're awake at three in the morning because the sugar rush hasn't subsided," Tony told him.

Of course, he wouldn't be surprised if the boy was awake, anyway. He'd had nightmares about the bear attack and while nowhere near as dangerous, the skunk thing could trigger bad dreams as well, and Stark knew it. Add all the other minor calamities that had happened on what was supposed to be a simple camping trip to spend some time together out in the wilderness and he'd be surprised if Peter ever wanted to try camping again, really.

"He'll be fine, Tony," Natasha said, smiling at the boy in the light of the fire. "He can always sleep in tomorrow if he wants to."

It wasn't as if they had any kind of schedule for the next day, after all.

None of them were really in a hurry to go to bed just yet. The rain had washed through and left the lakeside smelling fresh and clean and the sky was absolutely cloudless, now. The water in front of them reflected a million stars and a moon that was bright and almost completely full. It was about as picturesque as anyone could ask for. Certainly all that the four of them would want.

Once the coffee was gone, though, and the fire started to die down, Natasha finally yawned.

"I'm going to bed.

Not surprisingly, since she was the one who ached the most, despite the ibuprofen she'd taken for her knee. She'd feel better when she could stretch out a little more readily than the chair allowed.

"I'll help you," Strange told her, setting his empty coffee cup aside and standing up. "I'm ready to head that way, too."

He didn't really help her as much as he just went over and picked her up, blankets, cloak and all, and carried her to the tent.

"I think he's trying to show you up, Peter," Stark told the boy as they watched them vanish into the tent and saw a light appear as one of the lanterns was switched on.

"Oh?"

"You carried her out of the woods for what, half an hour, forty-five minutes?"

"Yeah, something like that."

He hadn't really been keeping track.

"So he can't be shown up, you know? He'll probably carry her to breakfast, too."

Peter smiled; he was always amused when the two men said something like that about the other. Peter wasn't fooled at all. He knew they really liked each other, but there was definitely a rivalry between them. Which he supposed was only natural since they were so similar.

"He didn't need to carry her at all," the boy pointed out. "She had the cloak with her. It probably would have carried her if she'd asked."

"Think so?"

"It likes her."

"I like her, too," Stark said. "Not like tab A into slot A or anything…"

He trailed off, smiling, and Peter rolled his eyes with a grin, knowing he was never going to live that down.

"It's slot B," the boy corrected him. "If you want, I'll have May give you the talk so you can get it right."

"I probably need it," Tony conceded. He reached over and rested a hand affectionately against the boy's cheek, a habit he'd gotten into when he'd been so sick and not one that Peter seemed to mind so he wasn't in any hurry to break himself of it. It was another one of those things that he could get away with now that the boy wouldn't want anything to do with once he was older. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine. It wasn't that many marshmallows."

Now it was Stark's turn to roll his eyes, knowing that Peter was messing with him by purposely misunderstanding the question. He slapped his shoulder.

"Smart ass."

"I'm okay. Stitches are a little itchy, really, and head doesn't hurt at all. How bad do I smell?"

He couldn't tell for himself, since the skunk smell had just turned into one long, awful odor in his mind.

"Nothing like you did before. At least not so bad that we're going to have to banish you to sleeping in the bed of the truck or something."

Peter was well aware that they would never have done that. The cab of the truck, maybe, or the car, even, but not out in the open. Probably, though, after the events of the trip, Mr. Stark would think twice about bringing him out in the wilderness ever again. It hadn't been the best way to showcase his outdoors skills, after all, even though he knew deep down that none of it had really been his fault. Just some bad luck.

Tony was well able to see the boy's expression, even in the light of the dying fire and the moon, but he didn't understand why it went from cheerful to melancholy so quickly.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Stark frowned.

"Peter…"

"I just…" the boy shrugged, looking away from Tony and down at the fire. "I had a really good time. I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused, but I still had fun. I just wanted you to know that. But I'll understand if you don't want to do it again."

It wasn't what he'd expected to hear, and Tony shook his head.

"For such a bright kid, you can be really dumb sometimes," Stark told him.

"What?"

"The whole point of this trip was to spend time with you," Tony confessed. "And I did. I am. Would it have been better without the bear and the skunk? Yeah, probably. But it wouldn't have been better without you. Ever. So don't think you're going to get out of another camping trip, okay? You're not. Next time, we'll have a little more experience under our belts, is all."

Peter smiled, feeling warm and wanted.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." He stood up. "Let's go to bed, okay? I get the feeling that somewhere out there a moose is just waiting for me to leave you sitting alone by the campfire."

The boy laughed and got up, too.

"Fair enough."