st_ormbreaker | (no subject)

(no subject)

Thor idly throws Mjölnir up in the air with a spin, then catches it easily in one hand. He always tends to play with his hammer whenever he's feeling restless and for some reason, he feels restless now. Going home suddenly feels incredibly important, even though the only thing waiting for them there is the festival and accompanying feast for Walpurgis. The holiday might have felt important when he was much younger, the same way Yule was important to him when he was very small, but 1500 years of celebrating and feasting had drained his excitement for it. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy it (he did) -- at this point, it felt more ritual than anything else.

Still, there was something that felt important about it this time in ways it hadn't before. He couldn't help but think it was because Tony was accompanying him. None of the other Avengers had ever had the chance to visit his homeworld, and it was difficult for him not to feel excited and proud to show it all to someone.

"You will want to stay close," he says, before he lifts Mjölnir. "You do not want to fall off of it."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Infinity Stones? Thanos?" Tony stood and rotated his shoulders, wandering to the window. "That convo went by quickly, but I didn't just forget."

Thor adds Tony's explanation to his mental checklist of reasons why he should have kept his brother's death to himself.

"It wasn't much of one," he says, feeling somewhat remorseful. He leans over his thighs, letting his forearms lay comfortably atop them as he leans slightly over. Thor looks at Tony, whose feet have drawn him comfortably to the windows' edge. "Sorry."

Tony glanced at Thor's reflection quizzically. "For?"

"Not... letting you talk things out."

"We worked it out, right? Boinking is a tried and true method of negotiation." Tony leaned against the windowsill, hooking his fingers around his ankle to stretch his quadricep.

"If this is about Loki, I am very committed to making nice before making him into a nice pâté. Besides, it's hard to nuture a hate-on for the guy that kept you from coming out of a fight a vegetable."

Thor blinks. "Did you really just call it boinking?" he asks with a growing smile.

"What do you prefer? Gland-to-gland combat?" Tony turned with a wink and a smile.

That draws a laugh from Thor.

"We usually just called it fucking," he says. "Or love-making. It varies with context."

"I think we strike a decent balance." Unable to cleanly stretch his other leg, Tony settled for perching proudly on Thor's lap.

Thor hums appreciatively. "I think so, too."

He sets a hand to Tony's back, and looks out at the window. "I'm really glad you're okay," he says, finally. Tony's not okay -- or at least he's not yet, but somehow it seems easier to say than I'm really glad you're alive.

"I'm glad you're not fussing anymore." Tony rolled his eyes, bringing his legs back around to perch sideways. "You never did in the old days."

Thor idly drums a few fingers against Tony's back.

"I think anyone would fuss after you after the blow you took."

"Yeah but you? Thor Odinson, God of Thunder? Isn't dying a warriors death an instant ticket to Valhalla anyway?" Tony pressed back with his abdomen, testing the iron strength of the man's arm.

"I don't want anyone going to Valhalla before I do." Thor stops drumming on Tony's back and lays it flat against its surface; his hand holds steady against his weight.

He sets his chin down on Tony's good shoulder.

"I'm a selfish god."

"Wait, wait, I've been practicing." Tony cleared his throat.

"Ósnjallr maðr hyggsk munu ey lifa, ef hann við víg varask, en elli gefr hánum engi frið, þótt hánum geirar gefi."

Of the many odds and ends the library kept, Hávamál was one of them. While Tony was proficient in Latin-style languages, a Old Norse was an interesting beast to tackle.

"Your pronunciation can use a little work, but if you're trying to say something about our current topic of conversation --"

Thor drums a few fingers along Tony's spine again, as if tapping out a melody on his vertebrae like they were the keys of a piano.

"-- the foolish man has done nothing his entire life, and is unfulfilled. You have done a great deal in yours."

"That's not a proverb." Tony's smirk fell. "And this isn't a debate. Whatever reason you have for keeping me out of a fight for half the life in the universe? Speak now or hold your peace."

Thor's fingers stop playing their song.

"I don't get why there has to be a reason," he says, suddenly bristling irritably for reasons he can't fully understand. "You don't think after losing my brother, after losing my father that I wouldn't want to keep the few other people left in my life safe?"

"That's a reason. And it's not invalid." Obsessively controlling your loved ones movements so they could stay safe? It's not like Tony was a stranger to that.

Still, he couldn't fight the sigh that arose. How the hell did he say "I'm sorry for your loss but this is a no go" without sounding like an utter bastard? If he didn't resent it all before Thor's apology, he was sure starting to.

'I could hold how I'm trying to be chums with the man who attempted to kill me and the entirety of humanity over your head, Mr. Guardian of the Nine Realms. But I'm not gonna. Because someone in this goddamn equation has to keep from being shitty and evasive.'

A filter was sure a great thing to have. He should have tried years ago.

"But, you can't take Tony Stark without Iron Man. I'm sorry."

"Do as you will. I know you well enough to know that I can't stop you and I wouldn't anyway."

Though he wishes he could.

Thor lays back on the bed and looks up at the ceiling and doesn't say anything else.

"...That's it?" Filter, gone. Tony just stared down at the man, wondering when the Thor from his memories would burst out of this resigned stranger's chest and put up a fight. He could have morphed into Pepper herself and that would have made more sense.

"I thought you, of all people--I thought you'd get it." He pushed off with his good arm to stand. "We don't stop just because it gets scary, we don't stop just because it hurts."

Thor bolts upright. He's on a feet an instant after that.

"Don't talk to me about hurt! You know nothing of what I went through!"

Thor was confident; there was rarely a time when he wasn't, but he was confident that there was no person alive who could possibly comprehend what he had been through. Even Tony Stark.

Tony didn't flinch, yet he was sure he felt his hair blow with that one. Any man who didn't know Thor as well as he did would have surely scampered for cover.

"Yeah. I don't." Tony tossed his hand up uselessly. "You won't let me."

That promise about being direct was clearly a one-way street, despite all his hopes that the gesture would become reciprocal.

"You want to know?" Thor snaps. "My sister -- the one I didn't even know existed until 60 seconds before -- appears out of a portal, breaks my hammer, nearly kills men and Loki, then slaughters Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg -- my friends from birth. And while I'm enslaved to this maniac on Sakaar, she kills most of my people, and turns the long-ded warriors of Asgard into her personal undead army. And when I finally escape the psycho who's made me fight in his personal coliseum, I try to stop her so the few people I still have left can escape, she slashes out my eye. I put everything I had into stopping her, and it's not enough. She's going to kill all of us -- she's going to destroy all the Nine Realms and I had to destroy Asgard to save them, to save Earth, to save the shipful of people I still have left. And now there's nothing."

And when Thor stops, he can barely believe he's said it -- that it all came out in what amount to be a breath. His arms are shaking now, the same way they were shaking after his father's death, when all he wanted to do was blame his brother.

Except now, there's no brother to blame. There's no one to blame except himself.

Nothing.

That dark spectre that had been knocking on the back of Tony's brain was solidifying at that single word.

And still, he ached to know. He had to know. Even if he had to walk away from Thor to know it.

"...You're living it. Aren't you?" His lips parted in an empty smirk that was flashingly brief. "My worst nightmare. But apparently it wasn't me who got to be the last man standing."