st_arkintern | (no subject)

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Today, Peter Parker's the one behind the bar. Tony sits on the barstool opposite from him. Typically, they stand at about the same height, but when he's seated, Tony's just the tiniest bit shorter.

Peter looks down at the glass, and then down at him. "You think this is enough alcohol?" he asks, gesturing at the glass, filled with amber-colored rum. He'd asked Tony if he'd help him learn how to make drinks, but Peter was self-conscious about the entire affair, checking in for the Tony Stark seal of approval almost every step of the way.

He really wanted to make a good drink for Tony.

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"It's not that I don't believe you right now --"

Tony's being extremely earnest and Thor really believes that Tony feels this way right here and right now.

"-- but are you sure you're still going to feel like this tomorrow?"

"You mean after I apologize to Peter for drinking and double down on that promise to seek therapy?" Tony had no intentions of just abandoning the boy--but he was in the moment with somehow else whom he owed a great deal. The vomiting had a halfway sobering effect.

"It's been on my mind non-stop." Enough to distract him from the five reality warping fruity pebbles. Small blessings. "I won't get on my knees and plead you back. Sober enough to spare us that much. I just want you to believe me."

Thor gestures at his own face.

"Take the -- take the mask off. I feel like I'm having a conversation with a robot."

Tony approached, apparently ignoring Thor's request as he grabbed the other man's hand and pushed it against his reactor--triggering the armor to recede into his usual Black Sabbath-jeans combo.

"...Believe me, I've got a case." He murmured, a faint melodic lilt to his voice.

Thor's open palm stays there for a moment longer than it probably should before falling down to his side.

"What are you talking about?"

“On Nancy. With the laughing face.” Tony pushed his glasses up on his nose, smiling. “She takes the winter, and she makes it summer. And summer could take a few lessons from her.”

Pity ‘Thor’ didn’t right amount of syllables.

“...I’m sorry. I’m not good with words. Lyrics are only somewhat better.”

Thor's initial surprise at the sight of Tony bursting into song quickly melts away into affection.

"You are a complete enigma, Tony," Thor says, and he reaches out to tousle Tony's hair playfully.

Tony’s head bobbed with Thor’s rough hand on it, struggling to keep his center of focus on the man’s face.

“I do love you. If I made you doubt that...”

"I know you do." Thor runs his hand along the back of Tony's head and his neck before letting it fall down to his side.

Saying You're better off without me or It's too late for me to apologize seemed too self involved--given, Tony was a master of that, but he didn't need to speak for the man. The pragmatic side of him insisted that distance was for the best, that Thor seemed decent enough without him. Neither of them needed tears for what was apparently the inevitable and least of all did Tony need the final death knell for his dignity. He sucked all of it in.

"That's all I needed you to know." His rubbed the side of his mouth, though there was nothing to clean. "There's no good way for me to end it like this, but..."

Thor presses a single finger against Tony's lips.

"Don't say anything," Thor tells him. "Just keep your mouth shut for awhile before you say something stupid."

Wonder of wonders, Thor's directive smashed through every stubborn and reckless layer of Tony's shell and he sealed his lips tight.

"I have not had anyone to cook for for a week now, so I ended up eating your portion and my own." Which granted, wasn't a significant uptake given how little Tony ate even on a good day.

"So every time I ate something, I thought about you. Even when I wasn't eating something, I thought about you. I thought about you a lot and I should probably be embarrassed by that, but I'm not."

Thor finally pulls his finger away from Tony's mouth.

"Do you want to end this?"

Thor tossed the ball into his court with such authority that Tony felt foolish all over again. He ran his hand over his lips and let it drop to his hip. He cleared his throat—only picturing one proper answer to it.

“...If I don’t see her each day, I miss her.” Maybe he was simply imagining it, but the distant rhythms playing in the bar matched his cadence. “Gee, what a thrill...each time I kiss her.”

That pulls a smile from Thor.

"Then let's not," he says. "But all that from the other day? We need to talk about it. Doesn't have to be now, but it does have to happen."

Thor reaches out to press his palm against Tony's face. "Your suit clean out your mouth when it cleaned out the rest of you? Because I really want to kiss you right now."

“Love me enough to take the chance?” Tony felt fairly confident F.R.I.D.A.Y had been thorough, sweeping his tongue across his teeth.

Thor doesn't hesitate. He leans over to kiss him, and wraps his arms around Tony's smaller frame.

The kiss was long and lingering, and Tony braced his hands on Thor’s forearms to remain steady through every moment—and make up for the lost time he hadn’t had his fingers all over them.

Falling back on his heels with a gasp, Tony murmured a kudos to Thor’s lung capacity. “Marry me.”

"Not my first post-kiss wedding proposal and it probably won't be my last," Thor says lightly. Thor plants a kiss to Tony's forehead, right near the hairline.

Tony's hair still smells nice. Thor had nearly forgotten the scent of it.

"From someone other than me?" Tony scoffed quietly. "I'm being serious."

Thor blinks.

"You're serious?" Thor repeats, not quite grasping this.

"I mean..." What did he mean? His mouth got ahead of his brain. He blamed the vermouth from earlier for that one. But just saying it--it was like a high on its own. He pulled back just to gesture through each thought, beaming.

"Like...'til Pop Goes the Interdimensional Bubble do us part. That type of thing. You've had dreams? I've had dreams. That if space is really exponentially inflating away from our pocket and into eternity, I'd wanna spend it with--" Tony's breath ran out on that one. He gestured at the man up and down.

Thor has always been loud and unashamed. Bashful wasn't really in Thor's blood. But when Tony clarifies that he is 100% serious, Thor finds warmth gathering in his cheeks for the first time in probably 500 years.

Thor looks down at the obnlxiously pink carpet and slides a hand along the back of his neck.

He forces himself to look up.

"Only if Loki can be our flower girl."

Once he caught his breath, Tony didn't miss a beat. "He still owes me that favor from the lava-scapade."

"He still owes me a favor too."

Thor's grinning now. Even if morning comes and Tony doesn't remember any of this, for these few brief moments, he had been able to consider a future that didn't somehow revolve around Thanos.

And Thor is utterly grateful for it.