st_ormbreaker | In Tents

In Tents

Thor hasn't gone camping in a few years.

The last time he went camping, it was with Jane Foster, Darcy, and Darcy's intern, who Thor was pretty convinced was her boyfriend. For most of the trip, Darcy and her intern were fighting loudly; Jane was constantly on her cellular phone because her calls kept dropping and there was some emergency at a conference she was guest speaking at; Thor spent much of that first evening casually eating a bag and a half of marshmallows at the fire before Darcy voiced her protest and he was barred from eating more for the rest of the trip, much to Thor's dismay.

Thor might have overpacked for the trip, but Thor was of the mind that it was better to be overprepared than under -- and that it was better to have too many marshmallows than not enough. When four hours had passed and they reached their destination, he set down their belongings and began to set up camp.

"I never pegged you for the camping type," Thor says, pulling the tent poles out of their sheath. Maybe he was, and Thor had just never known it. It just always seemed like Tony was into tech so much that he couldn't stand to be without it.

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"If I flatter myself I like to think so. They might disagree." Tony carefully oriented the telescope in the direction he wanted.

Thor continues working his way around their tent.

"I think it's cute," he says. "I've already met Liz, but I suppose I should introduce myself to Peter when we get back."

Thor pushes one last stake into the ground.

"She's been teaching me how to cook."

"You think everything's--cute." Tony bit his bottom lip in focus, focused on aligning the lenses just so. "Especially me. Mystery for the ages."

Upon getting it right, Tony backed up and clapped in success. "Taking up more space on the pantheon? God of Thunder, God of Fine Cuisine?"

Most things, though, aren't quite as cute as Tony.

"There's plenty of available titles now," Thor says with a smile, finishing his knot. "Didn't think anyone would protest me taking another."

He tightens it, then stands up, and looks appraisingly at Tony, still working with his telescope.

"I thought the next time I made you breakfast, I'd make it something worth eating."

Thor was learning to cook? For him? That was...astonishingly domestic. Tony wasn't sure how to react.

He settled on a sheepish chuckle.

"The toast you made the last time was decent." He glanced back with a grin. "Only had to scrape it off a little."

Thor smiles.

"Hopefully, next time you won't have to scrape it at all."

Thor surveys the tent, deems it habitable, then joins Tony by the telescope.

"Did you want to come out here for a look at the stars?" The stars were far more visible away from Earth's cities, but the Madonna Inn was hardly a city, and the view of the night sky there was indistinguishable from the night sky anywhere else. He'd become acquainted with the night sky as of late, in no part thanks to Loki.

"Entirely for the romantic atmosphere, I swear." A beat. "Okay. Maybe a little bit of data corroboration in there. I'll be quick like bunny." Tony was used to defending himself regarding these matters. "After this? Smore city. And then whatever you want after that. You can drizzle me with chocolate, eat marshmallows off my chest."

Thor just grins at that. Tony was truly ridiculous at times.

"I could use the practice," he says. "With the marshmallows. I burnt plenty of them last time I went camping."

It worked out well that Thor didn't mind his charred. He was pretty sure most people weren't particularly fond of it.

Thor steps behind Tony and presses the lower half of his face against the crown of his head. If not for the beard, Tony's locks might have tickled his face, but the beard functioned as a natural hair barrier.

And once his face is comfortably situated against Tony's hair, his arms naturally wrap around his body. "You corroborate your data," he mumbles into Tony's head. "I'll get us wood for a fire."

Thor relinquishes his hold on his partner.

"You do that." Tony's fingers lingered on Thor's arm as it slipped away. He glanced back with an appreciative smirk.

"Hate to see you go. Love to watch you leave."

Thor lets out a silent laugh, and he holds out his hand for Stormbreaker to snap into it. It seems wild, somehow, using a weapon forged in Nidavellir to cut firewood for the two of them. Lately, though, Thor found himself thinking less and less of what would be appropriate, and more and more about what he wanted to do, because he didn't know how much longer he'd be able to do what he wanted.

It takes Thor about a half hour to return with enough firewood to last them easily the next two or three nights bundled under two arms. Tony hadn't said anything about how long he wanted to stay and he'd packed appropriately for a few days, just in case they were making a long stay of it. Four hours of walking seemed like a bit much for just a day trip.

"It gets pretty cold at night," he says, as he starts to steeple the wood in place. "Even in the summer. Desert and all."

"That it does." Tony whistled at the fruit of Thor's labor from his seat halfway in the tent--easily enough for a few days.

A few days suited his needs fine.

"More reason to cuddle up."

"I don't need an excuse to cuddle," Thor informs him.

Thor stops building the fire long enough to split one of the logs into kindling. He tucks it underneath the teepee fire lay, then sets fire to it with a little bolt of lightning. He closes the lay off with one final log.

Thor stands and waits for a moment or two for the fire to build up into something other than rising smoke. Unsatisfied with the rate at which the fire is growing, Thor sits down just outside the tent and watches.

"Get any research done?"

"Nothing intense. Get it?" Tony replied, nibbling on a rice cracker, motioning ahead. "Saturn in Sagittarius over there, saying, 'Hello.' Handsome bugger, rings on full display. I can relate." He tended to humanize whatever he spend protracted periods of time with, be it robots or planets.

"95 times more massive than Earth, yet less dense than water. Find a pool big enough, it'd float. You know what I think--given enough time, we'll test that. Human frivolity knows no bounds."

Thor has had the feeling for awhile now that something was up, but it's only when Tony's rambling grows more frantic, more desperate, that Thor feels certain enough to act on it.

"Did you want to talk about it?"

"About...Saturn? Sure, still was, last time I checked." There was a lot of movement in his body, and he needed to get it out. He eyed Thor for a moment and considered a little knocking boots in the tent, but his legs were telling him to roam, so up he got.

"62 moons, the over-achiever. The largest is Ti---me to eat." Tony made a beeline for the pack with the food and dug through it.

"You are doing an awful bad job of acting like everything is okay, by the way," Thor observes as he watches Tony pad over to the food pack. "Just in case you were wondering."

"Ramen? That boils quickly. S'mores for last." Tony kept digging.

Thor lays back in the sand, his hands folded behind his head.

"Fine, don't tell me," Thor grumbles irritably. "I will just guess. My brother briefly turned you into a Pomeranian."

Thor's non sequitirs were usually enough to break Tony's state, but not now.

"Do you think pomeranians are even dogs? Found the ramen. Chicken or beef or," he squinted, "Oriental. Not too PC. Am I the only one who feels that way?"

Thor doesn't address Tony directly.

"Lost your favorite pair of sunglasses," Thor suggests next. "Shrunk your clothes in the wash." Not that Thor had any experience with that before Jane relegated him to dryclean dropoff duty. "Assaulted in your dreams by the ramen cup mascot."

"You got me." Thor was beginning to wear him down, and he chose beef. "He held me down and made me take his long, wet noodles. It was a salty affair. Seasoning everywhere."

"Sounds like it was an unpleasant affair," Thor says, propping himself up on one arm. "I can't say that I'm fond of having things shoved down my throat."

Like being nagged relentlessly to talk about something he clearly didn't want to talk about. Which is why he's willing to drop it after one lask ask:

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

Tony rooted around for the pot. "I tried to kill a man on check-in day."

Thor lets out a little hum.

"Was the man anyone we know?"

"The Winter Soldier. Maybe Rogers mentioned him before you left." Tony struggled to unearth the kettle from the bottom of the pack. "HYDRA operative. Assassinated Maria and Howard Stark. Now he's here."

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