Snap Decisions - for asgardhero

[starkingenuity]

Fun fact.  Turns out that you can't actually find a crazed super genius overnight.  As hard as Tony tries, bruises and a dented suit and all, he just can't.  It's a sticking point and he snaps at Bruce for no good reason at all before apologizing with a hit of scotch...and three doubles after he leaves

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[asgardhero]

There is the momentary shine of satisfaction when the door hisses open without the use of Mjolnir. As soon as Thor steps into the mess of the workroom, however, that brightness diminishes. He has never seen the room in such disarray. Certainly it has been strewn in metal and wiring before, scraps and parts--parts of parts--but even he could see the patterns on those occasions. A clear focal point to the madness even if it were only in the coloring of metal or physical direction of whatever build was taking place at the time. Something intrinsic to purpose. This.

This has no focus. No purpose. The door slides closed behind Thor.

The song of Stark's power sings out now that he is this close, accessible. Tempting. Oddly feverish. He follows it through the mess and moves machines out of the way when the footpath dwindles. The workshop is large, the madness larger, and Tony only one man with a song in his chest. Thor expects the sizzle of a torch to shout him out, the sharp whir of a drill to place him. Does not Stark always have something too loud--his own voice, tools, the noise he calls music?

Thor stops completely when he finally finds the man, in silence, dirty and frantic; worry winds through the Asgardian's guts and crawls upward like a snake to constrict his heart. It is easy to blame himself, if only because he was the last one with Stark, but that is not foremost on his thoughts just now.

Firstly, the pen is taken from the man's hand.

[starkingenuity]

The image stops flowing like liquid fire from his fingertips, through the pen, to what he was using as the recording paper and he turns his eyes slowly, very slowly towards the knee and thigh and shirt of someone that should be familiar but isn't. "I need that." His mouth sounds out the words but his voice is cracked and nearly gone. He doesn't even notice that nothing he's said is comprehensible.

It's too late now anyhow. The thoughts are gone. The images left incomplete.

Humanity will never get to experience the engine he'd been working on and Tony turns dark eyes, somber eyes back to the mess on his arm. It makes him irrationally hurt to see his effort go for nought. A swallow of absolutely nothing in his throat causes him to jerk upright and he grasps onto Thor's forearm to steady himself. At least there's recognition in his eyes this time.

"What the hell?" The rasping is almost comical. "Get out."

[asgardhero]

Thor is not laughing.

Stark looks terrible. His eyes are blood-shot and mad, his hair lank and clothes rumpled--

Thor's nose wrinkles. The man also smells worse than a warrior who has worked his way through a night of battle and then a day of celebration without washing between the two. The broken words are ignored, the ones that Thor can even understand. He does not know what is wrong with Stark but he does not care. He may be looked askance at because he cannot turn on the teevee boxes, but there are some things that he knows how to do very well and one of them is dealing with drunkards.

In one easy heave, Stark is thrown over Thor's shoulder. "Servant!" he calls as he makes his way back to the door over the route he'd come, an arm over his burden's rear to keep him from going anywhere. "Where is the small lake in this Tower?"

[starkingenuity]

Jarvis is a good enough sport to endure being called a servant -- he is one, technically, but Tony had programmed him with enough autonomy to be offended a bit by Thor and his bashing around Stark Tower. He'd asked for someone responsible, not something that was going to throw Tony around and demand a bloody lake! The AI directs Thor to Tony's private bath however, calm as ever, and keeps all sensors on the pair as Tony grumbles something in what might as well be Pig Latin against Thor's back.

The bathroom isn't as extravagant as one might expect a playboy billionaire to have. There is no gilded tub, though the receptacal is large enough for several people to fit comfortably inside of it and it is fitted with jacuzzi streams. There is also a large shower in the corner, a simple toilet with a massive collection of Wired magazines in a rack nearby and side by side sinks. It's clean. And white. And lacking the warmth that Thor might be more accustomed to in Asgard when it came to fire lit bathing facilities.

At least Jarvis has had the foresight to fill the tub.

Should the blond not throw Tony in straight away, he fill stripping the man is not a difficult chore and that Stark has semi-permanently covered himself in pen ink tattoos.

[asgardhero]

He is thinking a pool, but is not disappointed to see the large bathroom with the tub already drawn. Better. Drowning the man by accident was something he had no intention of doing. The room is strangely sterile--based on his own personal experience and the demolished workshop that he had just witnessed both--but Thor does not stop to puzzle out the gleaming fixtures or the reading materials. He does not stop to take off Tony's clothes, no. Not until he's dropped him into the bath already. Then he is hands-on to make sure the man does not go under, and begins to strip him as long as he is going to get wet himself.

The writing scrawled into Stark's skin darkens the until-now determined expression on the large blonde's face. It is everywhere and the ink blurs only faintly with the submersion. That madness and genius are something intertwined is not singular to Midgard--Loki, for instance, walks such a fine line. There are others besides, artists, for instance, who imagine soaring masterpieces but tear their hair when the food is not lined up so on their plate.

Thor gathers Stark's face in large hand, the man's dark lashes clumped into fans. Such eyes.

[starkingenuity]

There's just no fight in Tony at the moment, though the shock of water and heated breath against his face are enough to remind him that he's human and not some robotic monkey scrawling the secrets of quantum mechanics into the soft skin of his inner thighs. The recognition that had been there before in the workshop when Thor first roused him from his maniacal stupor becomes clearer at the touch of the man. Thor's the lighting rod and Tony the ground. The engineer knows who it is that has him and that tugging song that runs through his aching fingertips won't let him fight it.

Such eyes could not be a shade darker than they are and almost the exact opposite of Thor's brother's eyes. Crisp, cool spring green at one end of the spectrum. Brown the color of soft, fertile soil at the other. The similarities outweigh the differences and it seems as if Stark has been made and fashioned simply to torment Thor with that which he can not have.

Even if Tony does not know he is a runner up in the grand scheme of things, Thor certainly does.

Fingers with bloodies nail beds lift to stroke water through a course blond beard and Tony sucks in a breath. The bath and the steam has been enough to at least allow him to croak out an intelligible string of words finally. "How long's it been this time?"

[asgardhero]

This time.

Thor focuses on the man before him, the dark, bright eyes that are clear for this moment, the feel of the damp touch, the echoing pulse of the thin blood that he can feel at this proximity--Thor focuses on all of that, and not how much like his brother Tony Stark may be. In this moment, at least, he is his own man and not some ghost that Thor will chase for eternity.

"Four days." The words are a murmur.

[starkingenuity]

Four days. Right at the very end of the limit he'd set for Jarvis to get him some help. All right, he'll need to tweak Jarvis' common sense again. Tony's eyes don't leave the grip that Thor has on them, even as his breathing evens out. Is it proximity to the electrical feedback loop that calms him? The heat on his skin? Maybe it's just that it's taking him awhile to snap out of all of this considering the amount of alcohol in his system...and little else.

"I'm all right." Tony's saying it for his own benefit more than Thor's as he drops his hand to the blond's broad shoulder where the ends of his hair drip and stick to his skin.

[asgardhero]

"You are not all right." Thor moves his own hands then, sliding fingers into the water to lightly grip a visible thigh through already murky water. "I do not understand all of this. You have paper. You have machines that translate your thought into screens and life. What is this?"

No, he does not like it and no, he will not go along with it and pretend he does.

[starkingenuity]

Thor's willingness to be close to him when he smells of frantic desperation and sweated out, stale alcohol is partially disturbing and gut clenching at the same time. It's worse when Tony does not mind the touch, given so casually, with such feeling that he aches for it to linger. He should care. He should recoil. He does from everyone else unless he initiations the action.

With Thor's eyes otherwise occupied, Tony feels free to drop his gaze and bow his head.

"Paper can get lost. Harddrives can be corrupted." He doesn't expect Thor to understand the use of his body for a canvas. He's written on his toes and the crooks of his elbows too. There's no reason for it. Or for the slow dip of his head to Thor's chest. "Ink can be washed off. I didn't even think to... It doesn't matter."

He'd going to lose all of this and in a way, he ought to if he wants to heal from it.

[asgardhero]

It does matter. It quite obviously matters. And perhaps that is the only reason hands do linger, keeping their positions just for a moment before they finally find an new endeavor.

Tony's head may be jostled slightly, but Thor's motion is smooth enough. A washcloth. Soap that smells far too much like some odd perfume but far better than the bitter sting of old alcohol and sweat. Then even as Tony lingers on his shoulder he is beginning to scrub what he can. The strokes are hard. Rough. They pinken skin but the ink clears, leaving only the red lines where pen cut flesh. "Some things are meant to be lost," he says as he works at the skin accessible without having to move Tony. "They are more precious, have more meaning, when they are gone."

[starkingenuity]

He doesn't want to be taken care of. It's a little bit humiliating and it feels too good to like. Tony is pushing forty years old. He's his own man and has been since long before his parents died. He's not trying to angst here, he's trying not to get angry. The desire to push Thor away ebbs and flows but never breaks through the barricade between the teammates.

If Thor is chasing a substitute brother -- let's leave out the sex and the consequences of that -- then what could Tony be after? He watches Thor scrub the pen marks from his skin, listens to his strong, proud voice wax philosophical and draws back to present his hands for Thor to continue with his work.

Towards the end, when Tony looks like a drowned rat criss crossed with raised, bruised lines that will disappear after a good night's rest, he figures it out.

He wants a counterpart. He wants a constant. And he wants one that is warm and not just a programmed voice.

Tony beads water down the lengths of his forearms as they leave the bath and his eyes close as he learns to get use to the feel of wet beard against the smooth skin not covered by his own facial hair. The reactor presses to Thor's chest and that happy euphoria edges off the ache.

[asgardhero]

Thor is pushing nine-thousand. He knows how very hard it is to break a habit.

Ink is finally sloughed from skin to Thor's satisfaction and he stands Stark only to catch him as he stumbles out of the bath. Thor's own shirt had been soaked and stripped; while his jeans are not much better off, they've stayed on. When the reactor sings to him his chin drops to a bare shoulder and he lets his nose trace the soft skin behind Tony's ear before he steps back. Addiction is nothing to be indulged. "You are unsettling when you are quiet," he says, a lopsided sort of smile on his face.

"In Asgard we would make you fight, or drink, until you passed out." But there's a quick gleam in those blue eyes and Thor shakes his head. "But I have a feeling you are too stubborn to pass out, so I will go by Darcy's advice."

There should be pants in Tony's bedroom somewhere. "Pancakes and coffee." The wisdom is imparted as he digs thought Iron Man's drawers.

[starkingenuity]

Addiction is meant to be indulged. Tony might be offended to think himself an addiction, but it is incredibly fitting when he's lived his life going from one fixation to the next. That's not to say that he's not exceptionally glad when Thor's stopped touching him because he has vague recollections of tenderness and affection from the bath... And not so vague recollections of that single, somewhat stunted kiss that likely left Thor with a bad taste in his mouth. Literally. Four days worth of morning breath is not something you share a first kiss on.

First and only kiss, Tony reprimands himself. The sex was bad enough. He doesn't need to get sentimental here.

Even with Thor playing Mother Hen and setting out clothing for him and mentioning breakfast and--

"You are not cooking." He snatches the soft sweat pants from Thor's grasp and covers himself, hand moving protectively over his reactor. That's what's started all of this trouble. Damn thing. "And as much as I like explaining to waitresses why you need ten helpings-- Yeah not today."

[asgardhero]

Being over-affectionate with Stark now would be a disservice to the man as he is. Vulnerabilities are only something Thor takes advantage of when he has Mjolnir in his hand.

And yes, his breath is quite intolerable.

"You flatter yourself, Stark. I would not take you out in this state--I think you would draw far more attention than my appetite." Thor crosses his arms over his chest. "I am sure that I should be able to make food, but if you are against the idea then are there not places that we could call to make them bring food to us? Your city is founded on convenience, after all." He makes a motion to hurry the man along, into his pants.

Then he'll find the wonderful little tube of disinfectant that Jane employs so well. Humans are fragile, after all, and while Tony is clean, he has wounds.

[starkingenuity]

Within the hour, Tony has been mended, though he fought the entire time with ham-hock hands and growled and was as insufferable as possible to save face, food has been delivered from an over priced coffee shop whose answering counter-minion had seemed amused at the order of two dozen egg and cheese sandwiches, and is dressed and quite full.  One socked foot rests on the coffee table and Thor, a good distance away, amuses him by licking the paper that had wrapped each and every sandwich. Even Tony's.  It's probably an achievement that Thor hadn't eaten the paper...

Tony is on his second cup of black coffee and it balances on his knee in a paper cup provided by the cafe along with the large boxed coffee dispenser that had been sent over. Content and back to feeling human again, Tony invariable shifts the conversation to something they both have interest in:

Doctor von Doom.

What else could they discuss?  The women they were both supposedly involved with and yet never got around to seeing?

"Any luck on finding him at all?  Calling cards?  Giant robot bugs...?"

If its been quiet for four days...  That really does not bode well. What's he waiting for?