They were both out of their minds. There was nothing cute about Bruce's clearly twisted motivations in his relationship with Tony or Pepper. They were going to talk about this. Tony wasn't letting this go, and Bruce had to stay on his toes because they were going to come back around to it when Tony was damn well finished his dinner, or so he seemed to say as he aggressively pointed his spoon at Bruce once more before stirring his stew around purposefully. Maybe by then they would have all forgotten about camping, because Tony had no argument against something that should never have been an option in the first place. He wasn't prepared.
Tony didn't really know how he came to be laying on a worn, downy woven blanket, considering the stars he never saw back in New York through the latticework of a sparse canopy of trees. When he screwed his face up and lifted a hand to squint through his fingers at their glittering ceiling, blocking out the brightness of it, he could feel in his arms the weight of the blanket as he spread it over the grass, and he could see Sal laughing at him, not openly but with his eyes and a wave as Tony listed away from him. "You could take care of Pepper if you trusted yourself as much as I trust you. I trust you more than myself. You could do it," Tony said, up at his hand, even though he couldn't see Bruce and his voice sounded weird to his ears, like he hadn't used it in a long time. He let his hand fall back down, slapping it over his own mouth to see if his voice would change again and he could say something valuable for once.