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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"Besides the night I challenged you to hold me and you did?" Tony recalled that moment. It had been a total bluff that lead to a follow through he had no idea he wanted.

Coming up on his lowest low, and there Thor was. Smacking into the hard sky with him like a pair of perfectly good morons while their song played them off.

"You and Pepper--you wrestle with the doors I shut but you both make me want to let you in. That's all."

Thor press his face against Tony's neck.

"I'm used to getting what I want," Thor says. He plants a kiss on the little space beneath Tony's perfectly-shaped ear. "But even if I wasn't --" Thor pulls his face away. "-- I'd still end up giving you a hard time."

Squirming at a snail's pace, the vague tickling sensation brought a grin forth.

"Same question, while we're being honest..."

Thor doesn't need any time to think about it.

"The night before I left," Thor says. "He next day when you said that thing about me not leaving, I wanted to ask you to come with me."

He didn't, though, for the same reasons he didn't ask Jane to come with him, either.

"That long?" Tony couldn't keep the hint of genuine surprise out of his voice. True, they spent time together in their off hours. The trips around NY that started out as group outings turned into a lot of one-on-ones for them, as he took a special kind of joy in tossing a literal alien into the New York brand of craziness and watching them mix.

After Thor left, Tony sulked like a child. There were plenty reasons for that, but those outings disappearing was definitely a reason.

"Not gonna lie. I always thought you preferred Rogers to me." Iron Man was a popular hero, but not a popular man with those who knew him. He had accepted that.

Thor genuinely looks perplexed at that assertion.

"Rogers and I never went out together. Not the way you and I did. He's a good man and a valiant man, but he's no Tony Stark."

He gives the other man a squeeze, bringing him impossibly closer to him for a moment before he finally loosens his hold. And when he turns to look at Tony, the smile he gives him is full of affection.

"That's me. Traded in my good and valiant card for a ticket to a good time." Tony reclaimed his lips for a moment. "They were fun. All our--our little dates."

"They were," Thor says, smiling. "I learned much about Earth from you that I didn't learn from Jane."

In some ways, Jane and Tony were both similar and very different people.

"We could have had one of those dates if you'd arrived a few weeks sooner. The last portal that opened up led to Europe. Would have been nice to explore it with somebody else."

Scoffing, Tony knocked the side of his head into Thor's arm.

"Europe? Could've blown your mind with that one." Tony was a frequent flier. "Didn't go with anyone else, Big Guy?"

"I showed up about a week or two before the portal opened." THor thinks it might have been. It's hard to tell; all the days sort of blur in together here. Thor picks up the bottle, takes another swig, sets it down. "I had a few people I made friendly with, but we weren't close enough to vacation together." Clarice and Alec and River Song to begin with.

"I met up with the moron once and Rabbit a few times for drinks, but the moron is threatened by my existence, and Rabbit and I haven't met yet in his timeline, so we didn't exactly act like boon companions." He and Rabbit had become closer in the following months, but Thor believed he felt closer to Rabbit than Rabbit felt to him because Rabbit hadn't let lived everything he and Thor had done together.

Tony hummed as he listened. He was paying attention, whatever Thor had to say was important, but so were his arms and their firmness and the way their felt beneath his lips when he kissed or nibbled the skin. The same went for the bristles beginning on his neck and the lobe of his ear.

"Go on." He murmured.

Thor's mind briefly swims as Tony's lips abruptly work their way up his arm. He can't help but feel a little like a schoolboy. It normally took a lot more than this to draw a reaction out of him, but already goosebumps were rising up from the skin of his arms.

Thor swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing just as Tony's lips make it to his neck. He tries to ignore the man's nibbles and searches for something intelligible to say. It takes a moment before the neurons short-circuiting in his head manage to reboot themselves into a working state and he's able to find something else to keep the conversation going.

Because who was he to refuse Tony's request?

"I'm sure you met them," Thor continues. "The Guardians of the Galaxy." Thor at least remembered the name of their ragtag group, despite his disinclination to use their actual name when addressing them directly. "Met them in space. Told them about the Avengers. They asked if Kevin Bacon was a member of the team."

Climbing someone like a tree wasn't something Tony ever tried before this, but it was positively delightful. Balancing his knees on top of Thor's thighs, Tony pressed his lips everywhere but his mouth.

"Remember hitting up East Village? The club that tried to recruit you as a Chippendale. Then they found out who you were and insisted you should front run Viking Night. Good times."

Thor continues talking, though it's becoming harder to when Tony's being so distracting.

"Jane would have killed me if she knew I agreed," he says. "It's harder to go incognito now. I wasn't on Earth publicly for nearly two years and two women asked for a photo with me ten minutes after I showed my --"

Thor inhales sharply as Tony's lips find a particularly sensitive spot.

"-- after I showed my face on Earth. Tony, you're being very distracting right now."

"Sorry." Tony murmured with a distinct lack of apology, sitting back in the cradle of his lap. "It's been, what, two days? That's like an entire month in Midgard-time. My body's moving on it's own."

Despite that, he climbed off and scooted back to his bowl. "You asked for happy times. You were there for those, but I don't think you get how happy those times made me."

Thor wishes Tony had stayed there in his lap. He liked him being there, feeling the weight of his smaller body against his own.

He watches as Tony sits down with his ramen. Thor pushes over so he's sitting closer.

"I don't think I did," he says. At least he didn't until Tony told him as much. "I never thought you might think they were special."

"They were." Even if it took Thor's departure and the dissolution of the Avengers to realize it. "Even if I was bad at showing it and returned the favor by going behind your back more than once."

A pause. Tony lowered his fork and gazed back.

"Which is why I'm just going to say it. Get angry if you have to, you probably will, but I've got no other way to avoid dropping the ball with your trust."

Tony's poker face activated, but there was a subtle pleading in his gaze. "I'm asking you tell him. Loki. The truth."

The stubborn part of Thor stiffens the moment that Tony says that he's likely going to get angry. Not in preparation for getting angry, but in preparation for not.

But true to Tony's word, Thor finds himself bristling with irritation at Tony's ask.

"I don't think that's something you get to decide." Thor grabs a marshmallow and stares out at the tent because he doesn't particularly feel inclined to look Tony in the face right now.

"I don't. Which is why I'm asking." It was still hard to admit when he knew he wasn't the one calling the shots. At first, he was prepared to give the man an ultimatum, but even that felt wrong, greater good or no.

'Guess I really am growing as a person. Or going soft. Maybe both.'

"I came this close to telling him myself while you were giving each other the silent treatment. Even I have some respect for family bonds, hilariously complicated ones inclusive, and I didn't."

That irritation escalates to outright anger when he tells him he nearly told him. Maybe he should focus on the fact that Tony didn't, but the fact that he even considered it was enough to draw Thor's ire.

Thor abruptly stands, his back to Tony. He doesn't want to be close to Tony right now. He doesn't even want to look at him.

"I don't get why telling him is so important to you."

A deep breath. He saw this coming a mile away. He knew the place it was coming from. Still, it hurt, and the devil in him questioned why he was ruining date night for a greasy mass murderer.

"Because we're in the same boat. And I'd choose knowing each and every time if it gave me a chance."

Maybe he felt like he owed Loki something. Maybe he hoped Loki would become a valuable ally. In the end, the truest reason was that it didn't sit right to not let the man know. It felt cruel.

Tony made no move to bridge the gap as he watched the flames. He added a few pieces of wood to keep them alive.

"I get these--these weird visions. Hallucinations, maybe. Chalk it up to stress. It doesn't interfere with my daily living, but they're there. A coffin, in the distance. I can't see it clearly, but it's there." He brought his hand back from the flames. "I can dread it or run away, but I know it's there. And I know that I'm not in it yet."

Silence.

"That's all." His head sunk forward. "Whatever you choose, I'll honor it."

Dread it or run away.

Tony's words fade out after that, replaced with the sound of Thanos' voice.

Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same.

Thor inhales audibly as his hands ball into fists at his side. It's all he can do to keep his arms from shaking.

"I just told my brother the brunt of our people were annihilated by a sister neither of us knew," he says. "And now you want me to tell him that Thanos killed half of the few that remained. That he killed Heimdall. That he killed him."

He spins around to face Tony.

"I fail to see how it's important. Why if we're going to change things, I am somehow obligated to tell him that everything we have left goes to hell."

Tony rose. Now that the fire was properly tended, he felt he could move on.

"That's all." He said everything that was in him to say about the matter. No matter how much Thor wanted to argue it out, it just wasn't in him. He kept facing the fire.

"It's hard. For everyone. You, most of all. It's...far away from me." Words weren't in him either, apparently. He removed his glasses, wiping down his tired eyes with a sleeve. It came back wet. He put his glasses back on.

"It's all far away."

Thor knows that if anyone had given him the choice to remember everything or the choice not to, he'd choose the latter in an instant. He harped endlessly on Valkyrie about running toward her problems and not away from them, but in the end, he was just as guilty as she was.

Thor had truly believed that he was running towards his problems when he went on his suicide quest to kill Thanos, but now, it felt increasingly obvious to him that he had been running away from them. Thanos had won and Thor had come here and with no immediate objective to focus on, all that remained were the feelings he was avoiding. Anger, guilt, loss, regret.

Even now, he didn't want to face them. Physical pain he could abide; he'd spent centuries building up tolerance. Emotional pain was considerably newer. He didn't know what precisely to do with it. It materialized in unhealthy ways, like charging towards his ally and lifting him up by the throat or striking a man capable of wiping out the galaxy in the chest instead of the head just to see him suffer.

Or finding some reason to clash with anyone who might push him to confront them, the way he did Valkyrie.

"You ask me to tell my brother and when I inquire as to why you suddenly find it important, you tell me that you would want to know."

Thor exhales in a sound that doesn't quite make its way to a breathy laugh.

"Is that really it, Stark?"

"No." The glasses on Tony's face darkened to obscure the sight of his eyes, as per an impulse that ran through his neurons as he turned back around to face Thor.

"He would, too."

Another silence, and Tony struck out west.

"There was that spring about quarter of a mile back. I'm gonna fill the canteen so I don't get a hangover. Would kinda--kinda suck the fun out of the morning hike. You want me to pick up anything on the way, yell."

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