It All Started In A McDonald's...

so is this the superhero's version of being grounded?

Stark was pissed off. Super pissed off.

I don't think Peter's naivety picked it up, because he just rambled on about what just happened, sort of how he did when he was on the phone to Happy. The part of my brain that wasn't mulling over what had just happened noted, amazed, that this was the first time I'd seen Peter and Stark together.

Actually, except when I went to get my suit fitted, I haven't seen Stark himself in a long time. Or Rogers, really, now I thought about it. Both of them had sort of retreated into doing their own stuff, but especially Stark. (Rogers was still in the middle of researching about this whole Nemilosdrni Organisation, but I don't think he's found anything worth noting to the rest of us yet. Unless I wasn't important enough. Then again, I'd know, because Rogers told Barnes everything, and Loki had his ways of finding out stuff from Barnes, and Loki told me everything that was going on. So yeah, he hadn't found anything.)

But Stark, ever since he'd sold the Tower, just seemed to have vanished. Until now.

So we were obviously going to be in a shitload of trouble, or he wouldn't have shown up personally.

"How did you even know where we were?" I asked, cutting through Peter's monologue. Stark's head turned towards me. Sorry for talking. "Did you put trackers in our suits or something?"

"I put everything in your suits, including these heaters."

As he spoke, my suit dry-cleaned itself, and I sighed in content, and exchanged a glance with Peter, who was doing to same thing. OK, he really had thought of everything, and that was nice, I'll admit. Only it didn't exactly do anything for my soaked jeans and canvas sneakers.

"And, in answer to your question, yes, you both have trackers in your suits. But Loki actually convinced slash threatened me to let him have sole access to yours, Jamie, and somehow he managed to see through my twelve efforts to try to find a way around it, so I gave up," Stark said, shrugging. I translated that into Jamie-Speak: He tracked Peter, not you, so that means you can sneak around doing stuff without his permission as long as Loki's in on it.

Oh, Loki, you sneaky bastard, I thought, grinning to myself. Now I understood what he meant when he'd mentioned to me before that I didn't have to necessarily listen to Stark's rules about being out and doing superhero shit. He'd made it practically impossible for me to get in trouble.

...Unless I was hanging with Peter.

"What were you two thinking?" Stark demanded, sounding disappointed. The tone had more of an effect on Peter than on me.

"The guy with the wings is obviously the source of the weapons," Peter said, throwing his arms up. "We gotta take him down!"

"Take him down?" Stark repeated, as though it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "Steady on, you two, there are people who handle this sort of thing."

I gave him the side-eye. "The Avengers?" I suggested, sarcastically.

Stark's helmet-eyes turned to me. It was weird seeing him in his Iron Man suit rather than face to face. "Alright, I think I know what's going on here. You two think you're Avengers, don't you?" Ouch. When we didn't say anything, he continued, "Is that what Loki told you?"

"Loki didn't say anything. I know I'm not even close to being an Avenger," I said, frowning. "But Peter is."

"That's what you said," Peter added, to back me up.

"No, you're underage, which means I don't want you going out to do missions on your own because of insurance reasons," Stark argued.

"But you're a fucking billionaire, you can afford insurance," I retorted, which was probably a stupid idea.