Run Before You Can Walk

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

~~

“They should call you God of Miserliness.” Tony piped up the very second he and Thor were left to their own devices by Maria Hill and company, gesturing after them. “See? They’re going where the party is. I’m gonna follow.” From the moment Thor mentioned smuggling some brew aged for god knows how long from god knows where made from god knows what...JUST to rub it in Tony Stark’s face that he didn’t possess the mettle for it, but Steve Rogers did?

Unforgivable. He could forgive the remarks about Pepper due to how laughably and pathetically misinformed they were, but holding out on the host was just an utter insult.

Comments

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor's hands continue to move according to Tony's shifts and sounds, his strong hands massaging Tony's back and neck.

"Why don't you show this side of yourself to most people?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"Does a bird of paradise dance for every face in the day?" Tony smirked at the air, purring beneath his husband's touch.

[st_ormbreaker]

"I feel sometimes that we are very different people." Thor continues massaging, urged on by Tony's reaction; Thor liked pleasing his husband, both in bed and out of it.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"I'd rather save it all for you." His head lolled back dramatically, blinking a few sudsy drops from his long lashes.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor leans down and kisses him on the forehead.

"Will you take me on a ride in your sports car when we get home, then?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

"You can have the sports car." Tony pushed back into his hands, maximizing their skin-to-skin. "You can have twelve."

[st_ormbreaker]

"What would I do with twelve sports cars?" Thor can't even imagine it. He knew how to drive, better than Jane, even, but he much preferred piloting a spaceship to navigating from place to place in a car.

"I want to ride in a sports car with you."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“Jealous?” Tony adopted a coy smirk. “I’ll leave you guessing what Banner and I got up to.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You know, Bruce and I spent a lot of time together on the ship," Thor says, determined not to be baited. "I was one of the only people he knew." Valkyrie and Loki were the others, and though he had warmed up a little to Thor's brother, the two of them could hardly call each other friend.

Thor and Valkyrie, on the other hand... they fit firmly in the friend category.

"There were plenty of times, we would drink all night and he would fall asleep in my bed," Thor continues, reaching for the shampoo. "He snores a little in his sleep. These cute, quiet little sounds. Not like Hulk."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“Knew that. Sleepovers were a regular thing in the lab.” Tony kicked one knee over the other all too leisurely. “One time we were refactoring code and he konked out right on my shoulder.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Those squeezes a neat little circle of shampoo into his palm, then places it back down.

"So you know that he talks in his sleep sometimes. Said my name sometimes, too." Thor begins massaging it into Tony's hair.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“It’s cute when he does that, isn’t it?” Tony answered easily, as if oblivious to the man’s game entirely, reaching for another bottle of rose-tinted wine. “He do that little thing with his arm yet?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Which one?" Thor asks easily, as if there could be a litany of things he knows about Bruce Banner's arms.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“You know.” Tony rolled his palm over Thor’s thigh, indulging passively in the massage to his head. “The thing.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"The thing where his arm twitches in his sleep like a dog?" Thor asks. It makes sense that Tony might be referencing that, given the entire conversation has mostly revolved around Bruce Banner's queer sleeping habits.

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

Tony hummed in affirmation, eyes drifting half-closed in that utterly relaxed manner. Lounging in a warm tub, surrounded by his husband while the fragrance tastes of Provence danced along his tongue...his hand found his chest and he felt no worse off for the reactor’s absence.

“I miss him.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor's hands briefly draw to a halt in Tony's hair.

"Me too," he says, and he gets back to it. "I'm used to being away from people --" He'd spent entire years away from Asgard and the Warriors Three, just as he'd vanished from Earth for much of the two years between Ultron and Thanos. "-- but I still find myself missing them anyway." A beat, and then: "Missed you, too."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

Part of Tony wondered if the Avengers fallout would have taken place with Thor and Bruce around, though he’d concluded it was just as likely he’d be the odd man out amongst all of them. Thor recognized no earthly authority higher than his own, and Banner...well. He probably would have fled back to South America to escape the pissing contest.

“Love you.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Love you too," Thor says, and he removes his hands from Tony's hair a final time to give him a friendly tap on the shoulder. "Time to rinse down."

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

Suddenly, Tony was setting his drink to the side and sappearing beneath the water. A few seconds passed before he broached the surface with a gasp, dripping and shaking his growing hair out like a dog.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor grins at the sight of him and his wet strands falling into his face. He brushes them back and aside, then leans back in the tub, utterly content.

"You know, you're the cutest one here," he says, tapping a finger idly on Tony's spine. "Were you born that way or do you practice at it?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“Minored.” A chill touched his flesh, emphasizing his quip by seeking his husband’s chest for warmth. He lathered his hands up with the coconut shampoo, reciprocating the cleansing head massage.

“God, I could get used to this.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor closes his eyes. "Used to having baths with your husband?"

[st_arkravinghazelnut]

“The simple life.” Not how he’d pictured enjoying it, but his hands were massaging the stress out of his husband’s head while they were suspended in bubble heaven and nothing else mattered.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor makes little sound to the affirmative and smiles. "There were far more of these moments when I was still a prince," he says. "In between battles, anyway. After the revels."