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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"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."

"What?"

This time, Thor scrambles to his feet.

Tony motioned for Thor to sit back down. There was still a distance between him and his own emotions that he wasn't eager to bridge.

"Brainwashing. Now he's not brainwashed...I guess."

Thor sits back down.

"You guess?"

"I know. I've known. He's...a cog."

A victim.

"Look, I made him swear the Lokicratic Oath. Do no harm. I'll take care of whatever happens next."

Thor huhs at that, then shifts where he sits, lifting one knee up and stringing an arm on top of it.

"And that is the end of it," Thor says. It's clear from his delivery that he's not convinced that this has shut the door on this particular problem. Tony had been far more animated about Loki than he was right now, and things were decidedly more personal between this man and Tony, brainwashing or no.

"Far from. The next chapter is vigilance." Tony finally yanked the pot free. "Like I said, I'll take responsibility for this one. That's all I can do."

"I can run point on this one," Thor says. "It doesn't have to be all Stark, all the time in handling these things."

"I know." Tony ran a hand through his brunette mop (damn it needed that trim.) "I know."

"If you know, you really should act like you know," Thor says. "You're always doing this lone wolf thing. I thought we agreed you wouldn't do the lone wolf thing."

'And THERE it is.'

Thor always had that lecturing streak, and it re-doubled since they got committed.

"There's a lot of messy baggage." Tony smacked the pot down on the stand harder than intended. "But I get it. I'll be better."

Thor shakes his head.

"So us coming out here," Thor says, waving an arm, "and you rambling on a light-year a second are your idea of being better."

He's trying to get a rise out of Tony. Thor knows this, consciously. But even so, he doesn't precisely understand why it feels so important. It just does.

And on some level, Thor feels childish for it, but he doesn't at all feel the need to apologize for it.

Tony ran his tongue harshly over the sharp grooves in his teeth, exhaling a little chuckle through his nose. He kept his hands busy with setting up the dinner station.

"No, uh, that was my idea of getting comfortable before I drop another fucking bombshell on top of the pile." The water filled the pot, the fire brought it to a slow boil, and Tony shot up once his work was done and spun around.

"Is that okay? Do I get a little break in the action with the man I like-like before the nightly soul-baring?"

"We didn't talk about anything in my family ever. Everything was a secret." Loki's origins, the person Odin was before he decided to become a benevolent ruler, their sister he imprisoned in hell, everything that was going through Loki's head.

"I'm not going to let us not talk about it. That stuff earlier --" Another handwave. "-- just felt like another attempt to avoid having to talk about it."

Thor was quite familiar with that tactic at this point. His father going into Odinsleep, then later dissolving into Odin Force... his brother using his words as a verbal barrier from any semblance of a reasonable discussion.

Things had only just now started to get better. At least between him and Loki. Things had never really changed between him and his father. There were secrets up until the end.

Thor had spent the last few months running away from his problems. It was only after he talked to Tony and Tony gave him some small hope to cling to -- the hope that maybe if he couldn't save his reality, maybe he could save Tony's -- that he finally, really started to get better.

And that, maybe, is why he can't stand to think of Tony clinging to whatever he's got inside of him.

Tony scoffed helplessly. He paced before forcing himself to stand still to be heard, despite the mounting anxious energy thrumming through him.

"Am I speaking another language? I wasn't going to just not talk about it, a-alright?" Tony held out a hand, as if defend himself against further accusation. "I just--"

His fingers trembled. A flash of Bucky's face was at the end of his palm.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

'I'm past this.'

He turned tail and took cover behind what little the fire and the pot had to offer, crouching low to the ground.

'I'm past this. I'm fucking past this. This isn't happening right now.'

Thor is on his feet in an instant, though he slows when he makes his approach.

"Tony," he says softly, crouching down beside him.

Tony clenched his eyes shut, gripping his mouth. It took a full minute of reminding himself he wasn't dying to slow his breaths to a manageable point. The void before his eyes was endlessly long and impossibly loud. Counting prime numbers backward from 199 did the trick, but just barely.

When his neurons slowed down, he gripped whatever part of his teammate was closest--his shoulder, in this case.

"My suit--doesn't work. Not like it should. Ever since--I was a sitting duck."

Thor wants to reassure him that he's okay, that they're safe out here, but eventually they're going to go back to the inn and he won't feel that way even despite his best assurances. Likewise, Thor could tell Tony he would protect him, but there were no guarantees Thor would or could be when he needed him.

There was nothing quite like knowing you could take care of yourself. And there we're few things harder to accept that you couldn't.

"We can fix the suit," Thor says. It's something that he can day with absolute confidence. Tony was a genius. Jane had told him Tony's story over coffee one morning. That he had been captured and had saved himself and escaped by his own ingenuity.

Tony can do it again. Thor is sure of it.

"You tell me what you need and I will find it."

Tony nodded, briskly, muttering "yes" and "I know" nearly every other word Thor uttered. If there was something more shameful than breaking down in front of another Avenger, even one you professed your affections for, Tony couldn't imagine it.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine--" his stomach lurched, but he kept it down, "I'm fine. This is fine. It's fine. The suit--I'll fix it. We will. I'm not losing. Not here."

Using Thor's shoulder, he took a few more moments to himself before pushing up to stand.

"It's okay to lose it," he says, letting Tony use his shoulder for whatever he wants to. He knows Tony is likely just going to say "okay" or "it's okay", and Thor vaguely recalls saying it himself a few weeks ago, when he finally came clear about Thanos. "Be angry if you need to be."

Or sad. He remembers how he blew up at the Hulk months ago now for him insinuating he was sad. Thor didn't want to be. And more importantly, he didn't want anyone to think he was.

Thor wonders if Tony feels that way now. If he feels shame, the same way he did, when he broke down in front of Tony about Loki and about Thanos.

Thor doesn't want Tony to feel that way, but he knows there is no way he can change how he feels.

Thor rises to his feet, and ineffectually dusts off the front of his pants.

All he can do is be there when he feels it.

The mere sound of Thor's voice was soothing in and of itself, whether the man knew it or not. Tony hugged himself and wandered closer to the fire for the chill lingering in his skin.

"I'm all of those things. But that's not what matters. Staying focused--that is."

Thor joins Tony there at the fire. He looks down at it. For a moment, its crackles are the only sound between them.

Thor tries to dredge the words forward, but they don't come easily. He swallows the hard lump that formed in his throat the second Tony said that all he needed was to stay focused.

"I once believed all I needed to do was stay focused," he says, his voice steady. "I thought that if my feelings survived after I had seen things through, I could deal with them then.

"It wasn't true." It's the most that Thor can manage to say about the situation. "All I wanted was something to distract me from dealing with it."

If Thanos had died, Thor would have found something else to focus on: finding whatever Asgardians still floated in space and burying them; finding what remained of his people and leading them; groping at any chance to keep him from thinking about all he had lost. Even now, Thor's days were filled with distractions so he wouldn't have the time to focus on what he felt.

Thor begins to turn his head to look at Tony, but stops before he does completely.

"You may believe those feelings are powerful motivators, but they are going to seep into everything that you do, even if you think they won't."

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